Increasing Committee Involvement to Improve Communication Between Nurses and Nursing Leadership in an Emergency Department

Project Topic:

Improve communication between emergency department (ED) nurses and department leadership by increasing committee involvement

Hospital, City and State:

Nemours Children’s Hospital Delaware, Wilmington, Delaware

Unit:

Emergency Department (ED)

CSI Participants:

• Miranda Marcantuno, BSN, RN
• Alexandra Posa, BSN, RN
• Richard Ricks, BSN, RN, CPEN
• Lucas Stuchlik, BSN, RN

Project Goals/Objectives:

1. Increase AACN Healthy Work Environment Assessment Tool (HWEAT) True Collaboration standard from 3.37 to 3.60
2. Increase the percentage of nurses represented on a committee to 70%
3. Increase the percentage of nurses reporting strong communication with upper management to 60%
4. Decrease the turnover rate of ED nurses 20%

Project Outcomes:

1. Decreased HWEAT True Collaboration score from 3.37 to 3.24
2. Increased ED nurse committee participation from 18% to 57%
3. Increased ED nurses reporting “good” or greater collaboration between nurses and department managers from 56% to 59%
4. Decreased ED RN turnover 3% ,from 15 to 13 nurses
5. These outcomes resulted in a positive estimated annual fiscal impact of $225,200

Project Overview:

The ED department morale was low due to multiple changes in leadership within the department. This made communication between bedside nurses and leadership challenging at times. In addition, there was a decrease in active committee participation since the COVID-19 pandemic. Committee involvement can improve morale by fostering a sense of ownership, collaboration, and shared purpose amongst staff. The CSI team decided to focus on increasing committee participation to facilitate direct communication and true collaboration between bedside nurses and leadership. This project was also designed to foster empowerment amongst bedside nurses, thus improving overall morale and retention.

The CSI team started our project with a kickoff event evaluating department interest in available committees and ideas for new committees. We received feedback from staff members that they were hesitant to sit on a committee without knowing the meeting times and expectations. To mitigate this, the team performed a redose of our project including a bulletin board encouraging committee signups and including meeting times and frequency.

Overall, our project was well received by the department. We increased the department committee involvement by over 36%. This project also empowered nurses to become more involved in making positive changes to the department to improve the care we provide to our patients.