INLP

Communications

 

Particularly during the spread portion of INLP projects, gaining buy-in for new workflows throughout participating hospitals was critical to each project's success. This required gaining support interprofessionally, and across departments. Due to the challenge of implementing unified improve processes, INLP developed a formal communication strategy, and incorporated training on goal-based communication strategies into the off-site trainings. To guide participating hospitals in developing a comprehensive communication plan, INLP provided the following four-step process:

 

"Step 1. Identify all key audiences and stakeholders, including individuals, committees, and departments.

 

Step 2. Brainstorm all potential objections to and reasons for noncompliance with the medication administration project. For example, one frequent objection concerned the failure to ap- preciate the problems posed by interrupting the nurse who was attempting to administer the medication. Because the first med- ication administration project had already proven effective on two units within each hospital, the potential reasons for not wanting to implement the project tended to focus less on the approach’s efficacy and more on why the approach might not work in a specific unit or with specific patients.

 

Step 3. Group stakeholders on the basis of their expected objections and potential reasons for noncompliance. In some cases, the grouping of stakeholders was obvious. For example, at one hospital, during the first project the team had already en- countered resistance from intensive care unit (ICU) nurses who did not think that they needed to implement the intervention because (1) the unit is smaller and requires less travel distance be- tween activities, allowing the nurses to focus more on work at hand, and (2) each nurse is assigned only to one or two patients at a time, obviating the need for checking two forms of identification for their patients.

 

Step 4. Identify potential communication strategies (for example, one-on-one conversations, poster boards) to overcome the objections." [1]

 

Based on these four steps, a communication plan was developed by each team, with hospital-specific strategies created for specific stakeholder groups. A sample strategic communications message map can be found at the top right of this page. Lastly, the topic of "branding" was addressed, and each hospital create a tagline to facilitate consistent messaging, and promote program awareness. Program taglines were translated into logos, and incorporated across message mediums.

For the Medication Administration program, examples taglines included:

• “Pass it Right”, and  

• “Your Safety is Our Priority.”

 

Additional example of communications strategies are below.