Question

Stakeholder support is necessary for a successful change proposal project implementation. Consider your internal stakeholders, such as the facility, unit or health care setting where the change process is situated, and your external stakeholders, like an individual or group outside the health care setting. Why is their support necessary to the success of your project, and how you will go about securing that support?

Answer 1

Ans) Stakeholders are crucial entities that play a role in organization’s performance or operations or those affected by the actions undertaken by the organization.

- In healthcare, stakeholders also comprises of individuals, corporations or any other entity that has vested interest in medical decisions or evidence from which the clinical decision is based upon.

- Stakeholders play an important role in ensuring successful implementation of my evidence based project. Internal stakeholders play a major role in facilitating its successful implementation by providing their skills and knowledge and providing appropriate leadership in the organization to allow for the proposed change.

- In healthcare setting, internal stakeholders are mainly within the organization and they include various cadres of employees, including healthcare professionals, administrators and other individuals that play clinical and non-clinical roles.

- Nurses are the primary care providers and they play a major role in translating the evidence into actual practice while caring for the patients.

- Nurses work in multidisciplinary teams comprising of anesthesiologists, pharmacists, physicians, physiotherapists and other health specialists directly involved in provision of healthcare services. The organization’s management structure plays a critical role in providing necessary leadership and framework that would facilitate the adoption of proposed change. For this reason, the support of an organization’s management is crucial to ensure successful implementation of evidence based project.

- External stakeholders include patients, suppliers and financial organizations including government, health care insurance providers among others. External stakeholders play a major supportive role in implementation of change by provision of the required resources.

- For instance, the government provide healthcare infrastructure by providing resources for constructing health facilities, making policies that ensure the entire population access affordable and quality care in addition to facilitating training and recruitment of healthcare professionals.

- Patients are the end consumers of healthcare services and their support is critical in facilitating successful implementation of the evidence based project.

- Other external stakeholders include opinion leaders both within and outside medical profession, whose support is critical in influencing opinion or perception of the change in the community and the society at large. To acquire the support of the stakeholders, I can use several approaches, which includes creating awareness about the evidence based project. This can be done by holding seminars, participating in conferences, journal forums and other platforms that would facilitate interactive engagements. In addition, I would advocate for their support through community coalitions and media.

- In conclusion, stakeholders play major role in ensuring successful adoption of evidence in healthcare. Their support is necessary because they provide resources, skills and knowledge required for project’s implementation. Moreover, they influence the opinion of the public in regard to projected change. To secure the support of stakeholders, it is important to inform them about the project in in interactive forums.