Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal
This proposal seeks to address the persistent issue of communication breakdown during patient handoffs within the emergency and inpatient departments of a mid-size urban hospital. By implementing structured interdisciplinary handoff protocols and daily collaborative bedside rounds, the plan aims to reduce communication-related errors and enhance patient safety, care continuity, and overall team efficiency.
Objective
The plan will implement the I-PASS handoff protocol and integrate interdisciplinary bedside rounds (IBRs) within the emergency and inpatient units to standardize communication during shift changes. The primary goal is to reduce handoff-related errors by 25% over six months, thereby improving patient safety, treatment continuity, and interdisciplinary teamwork.
Questions and Predictions
- How will the use of I-PASS impact communication between nursing staff and physicians during handoffs?
I-PASS will standardize communication by providing a consistent format, which is expected to reduce preventable handoff errors and promote clarity across interdisciplinary teams. - Will the integration of interdisciplinary bedside rounds (IBRs) disrupt current workflows?
Initially, IBRs may cause slight adjustments in daily routines. However, as staff adapt, IBRs will streamline communication and reduce duplication of efforts, ultimately improving time efficiency. - How receptive will staff be to structured communication tools in a hierarchical setting?
While some resistance may arise, especially from long-tenured staff, early engagement, leadership support, and evidence of improved outcomes will help increase staff buy-in over time. - How soon will improvements in patient safety be evident after implementation?
Measurable improvements, such as reduced medication errors or treatment delays, are expected within three to six months based on outcomes from similar implementations in comparable clinical settings. - What if staff compliance with I-PASS and IBRs is inconsistent?
Inconsistent use could limit effectiveness. To mitigate this, ongoing audits, reinforcement from nurse managers, and peer accountability systems will be instituted to maintain adherence.
Change Theories and Leadership Strategies
Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory is the most applicable framework for implementing the proposed communication improvements in the hospital’s emergency and inpatient units. This three-stage model—unfreezing, change, and refreezing—aligns well with the structured rollout of the I-PASS protocol and interdisciplinary bedside rounds (Barrow & Annamaraju, 2022). In the unfreezing stage, leaders will expose the risks caused by existing handoff communication failures, such as medication errors and treatment delays, drawing on recent incident data to create urgency. During the change phase, staff will receive training on I-PASS and IBR procedures and begin implementing them in controlled pilot units. The refreezing stage will involve monitoring compliance through regular audits, using feedback loops to reinforce new habits and integrate them into the hospital’s workflow expectations.
To support this transformation, a transformational leadership strategy will be employed. Transformational leaders inspire collaboration by promoting shared values, fostering team ownership, and encouraging open communication (Lindert et al., 2022). Given the hierarchical and bureaucratic nature of the organization—as identified in the interview—this leadership approach is particularly useful for breaking down silos and encouraging interdisciplinary engagement. Nurse managers and department heads will act as role models and change agents, using motivational strategies and positive reinforcement to reduce resistance and drive buy-in for the communication model. This style not only enhances team morale but also ensures the sustainability of the new handoff protocols by aligning staff behavior with the organizational mission of patient-centered care.
Together, Lewin’s theory and transformational leadership offer a powerful combination of structural and behavioral support that facilitates both the adoption and long-term integration of interdisciplinary communication improvements in this care setting.
Team Collaboration Strategy
The plan will begin with a structured pilot program in the hospital’s emergency and inpatient units. Clear roles and actions are assigned as follows:
- Nursing Staff will implement the I-PASS protocol at every handoff starting in Week 1 of the rollout. Each nurse will also attend daily interdisciplinary bedside rounds (IBRs) during their shift.
- Physicians will lead IBRs at 9 a.m. daily in designated units, initiating the conversation around patient status, care plans, and discharge goals.
- Pharmacists will participate in IBRs on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings to review medication orders and reconcile any discrepancies.
- Case Managers will attend IBRs twice weekly to coordinate discharge planning and facilitate continuity of care with outpatient providers.
- Nurse Managers will conduct weekly compliance audits on I-PASS usage and lead biweekly feedback meetings to assess team engagement and identify improvement areas.
The collaboration approach integrates structured communication (I-PASS) with relational collaboration (IBRs), both recognized as best practices for interdisciplinary communication. I-PASS provides a standardized format that reduces variability and improves message clarity during handoffs (Blazin et al., 2020). IBRs foster face-to-face collaboration, allowing all team members to contribute to care decisions in real-time and resolve misunderstandings before they impact patients (Heip et al., 2022).
This dual approach is particularly relevant in the context of the organization, which the interviewee described as bureaucratic with siloed communication. By clearly defining responsibilities and embedding collaborative practices into daily routines, the plan builds trust and accountability across professional boundaries. These strategies are known to reduce communication failures, strengthen mutual respect, and promote shared ownership of patient outcomes—critical drivers of interdisciplinary success in complex clinical environments.
Required Organizational Resources
The successful implementation of this interdisciplinary communication plan will require strategic use of human, technological, and financial resources tailored to the capacity of the mid-size urban hospital where the plan will be executed.
Staffing needs are modest, as the plan will leverage existing personnel. However, a short-term increase in workload during the training phase is anticipated. Nurse educators or external trainers will be engaged to deliver a two-week training on I-PASS and effective team communication, requiring an estimated $2,000 for facilitation, materials, and scheduling adjustments.
Supplies and equipment include printed I-PASS pocket cards, staff training packets, and EMR updates to include I-PASS prompts. The hospital already uses an EMR system, so integrating I-PASS into current templates is technically feasible. The cost for IT configuration and materials is projected at $5,000.
All staff must have full access to electronic medical records for pre-round preparation, physical access to patient rooms for bedside rounds, and departmental access for scheduling and compliance audits to ensure seamless interdisciplinary coordination and oversight. There are no new infrastructure or licensing costs, though nurse manager time will be allocated weekly for compliance monitoring (approximately 3 hours/week/unit).
Overall financial implications for rollout and maintenance across two pilot units are estimated at $8,000–$10,000, covering training, technology integration, printed resources, and audit support. This is a one-time investment with minimal ongoing costs beyond routine monitoring.
If the plan is not implemented, the hospital risks continued inefficiencies and safety events due to communication failures. Repeated lab tests, treatment delays, and medication errors could contribute to over $25,000 in annual preventable costs. Additionally, persistent care gaps may affect Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores, nurse burnout rates, and patient outcomes, leading to potential revenue loss through reimbursement penalties and diminished patient trust.
By investing in structured communication and interdisciplinary collaboration, the hospital can significantly reduce long-term expenditures while enhancing safety, workflow, and team satisfaction.
Conclusion
This proposal offers a sustainable solution to handoff communication failures through I-PASS and interdisciplinary bedside rounds. Grounded in change theory and transformational leadership, the plan promotes collaboration, enhances patient safety, and reduces inefficiencies. Implementation aligns with organizational goals and supports a culture of quality, accountability, and continuous improvement.
References
Barrow, J. M., & Annamaraju, P. (2022, September 18). Change management in health care. StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459380/
Blazin, L. J., Sitthi-Amorn, J., Hoffman, J. M., & Burlison, J. D. (2020). Improving patient handoffs and transitions through adaptation and implementation of I-PASS Across multiple handoff settings. Pediatric Quality and Safety, 5(4), e323. https://doi.org/10.1097/pq9.0000000000000323
Heip, T., Van Hecke, A., Malfait, S., Van Biesen, W., & Eeckloo, K. (2020). The effects of interdisciplinary bedside rounds on patient centeredness, quality of care, and team collaboration: A systematic review. Journal of Patient Safety, 18(1), e40–e44. https://doi.org/10.1097/pts.0000000000000695
Lindert, L., Zeike, S., Choi, K., & Pfaff, H. (2022). Transformational leadership and employees’ psychological wellbeing: A longitudinal study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(1), 676. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20010676
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Question 
Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal
Create a 2-4 page plan proposal for an interprofessional team to collaborate and work toward driving improvements in the organizational issue identified in the second assessment.
Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal
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Introduction
When creating a project plan, it is important to be cognizant of the significant role that nurses play in strategizing about use of organizational human and financial resources within the organization.
Communication is the key component to beginning and finishing projects, such as a plan proposal. The ability to effectively communicate involves reaching a state of consciousness regarding how others think and feel about something—an awareness of human differences. In addition, being knowledgeable about what type technological advancements exist can greatly enhance a positive project outcome (Harris et al., 2023).
As you work on your assessment, consider the following: How do organizational leaders impact project successes, sustain practice change, and share evidence-based findings? Which technology might help you evaluate the project’s impact within a health care system?
You are encouraged to complete the Budgeting for Nurses activity before you develop the plan proposal. The activity consists of seven questions that will allow you to check your knowledge of budgeting basics and as well as the value of financial resource management. The information gained from completing this activity will promote success with the Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal. Completing this activity also demonstrates your engagement in the course, requires just a few minutes of your time, and is not graded.
Reference
Harris, J. L., Roussel, L. A., Dearman, C., & Thomas, P. (2023). Project planning and management: A guide for nurses and interprofessional teams (4th ed.) (pp. 9–10). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Professional Context
This assessment will enable you to describe a plan proposal that includes an analysis of best practices of interprofessional collaboration, change theory, leadership strategies, and organizational resources, including financial considerations, which can be used to solve the problem identified in the healthcare professional interview you conducted.
Overview
Having reviewed the information gleaned from your professional interview and identified the issue, you will determine and present a plan for an interdisciplinary intervention to address the issue. While you will not be expected to implement the plan during this course, the plan should be evidence based and realistic within the context of the issue and your interviewee’s organization.
The goal of this assessment is to clearly lay out the improvement objective for your interdisciplinary intervention. Be sure to build on the leadership, change, and collaboration research you completed in the previous assessment. Look for specific, real-world ways in which those strategies and best practices could be used to generate buy-in for the plan or improve the implementation of the plan.
Instructions
Use the context of the organization from your interview to develop a viable plan for an interdisciplinary team to address the issue you identified. Define a specific organizational or patient outcome based on the information gathered in your interview.
Using the Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal Template [DOCX] will help you stay organized and concise. As you complete each section of the template, apply APA format to in-text citations for the evidence and best practices that inform your plan, as well as to the reference list at the end. (Because you’re using a template, a title page is optional.)
Be sure that your plan addresses the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the rubric carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.
Describe an objective and predictions for an evidence-based interdisciplinary plan to achieve a specific goal related to improving patient or organizational outcomes.
Explain a change theory and a leadership strategy, supported by relevant evidence, that is most likely to help an interdisciplinary team succeed in collaborating and implementing, or creating buy-in for, the project plan.
Explain the collaboration needed by an interdisciplinary team to improve the likelihood of achieving the plan’s objective. Include best practices of interdisciplinary collaboration from the literature.
Explain organizational resources, including financial, needed for the plan to succeed and the impacts on those resources if the improvements described in the plan are not made.
Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions; contains few errors in grammar/punctuation, word choice, and spelling.
Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references, exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format.
Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal
Write a brief introduction (2–3 sentences) to your proposal that outlines the issue you are attempting to solve, the part of the organization in which the plan would be carried out, and the desired outcome. This will set the stage for the sections below.
Objective
Describe what your plan will do and what you hope it will accomplish in one or two succinct sentences. Also, comment on how the objective, if achieved, will improve organizational or patient outcomes. For example:
Test a double-loop feedback model for evaluating new product risk with a small group of project managers with the goal of reducing the number of new products that fail to launch. This objective is aligned to the broader organizational goal of becoming more efficient taking products to market and, if successful, should improve outcomes by reducing waste.
Questions and Predictions
For this section ask yourself 3–5 questions about your objective and your overall plan. Make a prediction for each question by answering the question you posed. This helps you to define the important aspects of your plan as well as limit the scope and check its ability to be implemented.
For example:
1. How much time will using a double-loop feedback model add to a project manager’s workload?
a. At first, it will likely increase their workloads by 5 to 10 percent. However, as the process is refined and project managers become more familiar and efficient, that percentage will decrease.
Change Theories and Leadership Strategies
For this section, you may wish to draw upon the research you did regarding change theories and leadership for the Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification assessment. The focus of this section is how those best practices will create buy-in for the project from an interdisciplinary team, improve their collaboration, and/or foster the team’s ability to implement the plan. Be sure that you are including at least one change theory and at least one leadership strategy in your explanation. Always remember to cite your sources; direct quotes require quotation marks and a page or paragraph number to be included in the citation.
Another way to approach your explanations in this section is to think through the following:
• What is the theory or strategy?
• How will it likely help an interdisciplinary team to collaborate, implement, and/or buy in to the project plan?
o Make sure to frame this explanation within the organizational context of the proposed plan, that is, your interviewee’s organization.
Team Collaboration Strategy
In this section, begin by further defining the responsibilities and actions that represent the implementation of the plan. One strategy to defining this is to take a “who, what, where, and when” approach for each team member.
For example:
• Project Manager A will apply the double-loop feedback model on one new product project for a single quarter.
• Project Manager B will apply the double-loop feedback model on all new product projects for a quarter.
Vice President A will review the workloads of project managers using the double-loop feedback model every Thursday for one quarter.
After you have roughly outlined the roles and responsibilities of team members, you will explain one or more collaborative approaches that will enable the team to work efficiently to achieve the plan’s objective. As with the change theories and leadership strategies, you may draw on the research you conducted for the Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification assessment. However, you are being asked to give a more in-depth explanation of the collaboration approaches and look at how they will help the theoretical interdisciplinary team in your plan proposal.
Another way to approach your explanations in this section is to think through the following:
• What is the collaboration approach?
• What types of collaboration and teamwork will best help the interdisciplinary team be successful?
• How is the collaboration approach relevant to the team’s needs and will it help drive success?
o Make sure to frame this explanation in terms of the subject of the plan proposal; that is, your interviewee’s organization.
Required Organizational Resources
For this section, you will be making rough estimates of the resources needed for your plan proposal to be successful. This section does not have to be exact, but the estimates should be realistic for the chosen organization. Items you should include or address in this section:
• What are the staffing needs for your plan proposal?
• What equipment or supplies are needed for your plan proposal?
o Does the organization already have these?
If so, what are the rough financial implications associated with using these resources?
If not, what are the rough financial implications of acquiring these resources?
• What access (to patients, departments, and so forth) is needed?
o Are there any costs associated with these?
• What are the overall financial implications for the plan proposal?
o Staff time, resource use, resource acquisition, and access charged.
After you have detailed your required resources, make sure that you explain any impacts on organizational resources that could happen if your plan is not undertaken and successful. In other words, if the issue you are trying to solve through your plan proposal persists or gets worse, what will be the potential costs to the organization?
References
Additional Requirements
Length of submission: Use the template. Remember that part of this assessment is to make the plan easy to understand and use, so it is critical that you are clear and concise. Most submissions will be 2–4 pages in length. Be sure to include a reference page at the end of the plan.
Number of references: Cite a minimum of three sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your central ideas. Resources should be no more than 5 years old. See the Bachelor of Nursing (BSN) Program Library Guide.
APA formatting: Make sure that in-text citations and reference list follow current APA style. See the APA Module.
Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
Competency 1: Explain strategies for managing human and financial resources to promote organizational health.
Explain organizational resources, including financial, needed for a plan to succeed and the impacts on those resources if nothing is done to address the improvements sought by the plan.
Competency 2: Explain how interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to achieve desired patient and systems outcomes.
Explain the collaboration needed by an interdisciplinary team to improve the likelihood of achieving a plan’s objective. Include best practices of interdisciplinary collaboration from the literature.
Competency 3: Describe ways to incorporate evidence-based practice within an interdisciplinary team.
Describe an objective and predictions for an evidence-based interdisciplinary plan to achieve a specific goal related to improving patient or organizational outcomes.
Competency 4: Explain how change management theories and leadership strategies can enable interdisciplinary teams to achieve specific organizational goals.
Explain a change theory and a leadership strategy, supported by relevant evidence, that are most likely to help an interdisciplinary team succeed in collaborating and implementing, or creating buy-in for, the project plan.
Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based communication strategies to impact patient, interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes.
Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions; contains few errors in grammar/punctuation, word choice, and spelling.
Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references, exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format.