identifying a problem you have or are currently experiencing in the workplace or your personal life.
identify a problem you have or are currently experiencing in the workplace or your personal life.
Provide a comprehensive introduction to the situation, including the background and scope of the problem, all individuals involved in the situation, any solutions that were attempted, as well as the outcome of those solutions. Make sure you have clearly identified who owns the problem and why. (Remember that you cannot always control the actions of others, so it should be a problem you own and thus have control over the alternatives for action.)
Then apply a formal problem-solving or decision-making model and apply each step of the model to reach a decision about the best way to address the problem. Make sure you identify whether a maximizing or satisfying solution was needed and why. Also make sure you have specific evaluation criteria that include both process (how you will measure the quality of your decision making itself) and outcome measures (actual outcomes).
Authenticity is important in this paper. Be realistic in your problem solving in terms of the time, energy, and power you must implement the chosen alternative. In addition, it is important to demonstrate self-awareness in your analysis by discussing what personal values or beliefs might have influenced your choices.
double-spaced, in length, not counting title page and references. APA format required (title page, citations in body of paper, and reference list). An introduction and conclusion are required. The steps of the problem-solving or decision-making model chosen are recommended as additional subheadings for the paper.
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Solution
Workplace experience
There is an increased requirement to advance in expertise and skills in the fast-growing healthcare world. With this advancement and growth, there is an increase in issues and problems that require prompt problem-solving skills by nurses and healthcare providers (Annizar et al., 2020). Covid-19 is one of the current issues affecting the healthcare sector globally. The pandemic has swept over the continent rapidly, giving little time for research on testing, its incidence and prevalence, vaccine, and prevention. This has demanded prompt action and problem-solving skills from healthcare workers to prevent its spread and reduce the deaths resulting from it. As a student nurse in a Covid-19 testing and vaccination area, I have had scenarios that require problem-solving. Problem-solving involves the process of finding solutions to complex or challenging issues. Moreover, problem-solving requires professionals and individuals to break down an experience and reflect on their experiences while they are taking place to apply them in the future (Annizar et al., 2020). Thus, this article describes a problem I experienced as a student nurse, how I applied the IDEAL problem-solving model to handle this issue.
Description
I was working in the Covid testing and vaccination area while rushing to fasten the waiting line for people waiting to be tested. That day, other days, the testing area was more packed compared to the vaccination area. Nurses and medical staff were held up testing people to ensure prompt and accurate results. We were all wearing our protective equipment to avoid contacting Covid-19. As is the procedure, all individuals that turned covid-19 negative were advised to take the vaccine to help protect themselves against the disease. The hospital staff was also coming for testing and others to get vaccinated. While attending to hospital staff and individuals on this particular day, a nurse tested negative and refused to take the vaccine, claiming the vaccine research was done too quickly. She feared it would affect her fertility in the long run. This didn’t come as a shock to the medical staff and me in the department, as we had heard this controversy from other medical staff for a while.
Moreover, other medical staff had even went to the extent of claiming they had developed antibodies from working in the front lines of this pandemic and from already contacting the virus thus did not need the vaccine. As a student nurse, I thought it wise to find a solution to this controversy and encourage more staff to get the vaccine to avoid risking their health and well-being. Before I was assigned to assist in the testing and vaccination area in the healthcare facility, I had very little knowledge about COVID-19 and had many misconceptions about the vaccine. However, the head nurse educated me on the testing process, the vaccine, its development process, safety, and research to ensure its safety. Moreover, I researched more on the pandemic and vaccine, which enlightened me on the importance of getting vaccinated, especially frontline nurses and medical staff.
This pattern of nurses refusing vaccines due to various misconceptions was clearly a sign of misinformation. Misinformation contributes significantly to vaccine controversies and refusal among nurses, mainly because they are not educated on the facts and intricacies of vaccine research (Alotiby & Al-Harbi, 2021). This scenario prompted me to speak to my preceptor, the head nurse, to develop a solution that would help stop this misinformation and vaccine controversy from spreading more. After all, how can patients accept vaccines if the frontline staff themselves are not keen on being vaccinated? With a go-ahead from him, I employed the IDEAL problem-solving model to develop the best solution for this scenario. The IDEAL problem-solving model helps individuals and organizations determine the cause of a problem up to implementing an effective solution (Annizar et al., 2020). IDEAL stands for; Identifying the problem, Defining the outcome, Exploring possible strategies, Acting on ideas, and Looking for effects (Annizar et al., 2020).
Identifying the problem
After the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020, misinformation regarding its cures, causes and treatments appeared in numerous media outlets. This misinformation has since continued growing despite WHO creating web pages on Covid-19 misconceptions to curb the spread. As mentioned above, nurses and medical staff are also not immune to misinformation (Alotiby & Al-Harbi, 2021). Moreover, 27% of U.S health workers and medical staff have not been vaccinated against this disease as of July 2021. The attitudes of health workers towards the vaccine as portrayed in the scenario above mirror the rest of the country as individuals can become more vaccine-resistant. Therefore, I decided to analyze the possible measures to curb and prevent this problem of misinformation and ultimately found the most promising and effective one.
Defining an outcome
Problem-solving enables an individual to develop the best strategies to ultimately receive the best goal or objective (Annizar et al., 2020). As stated in the scenario described above, the number of individuals willing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine was much lower than those being tested. Patients and healthcare staff are skeptical about taking the vaccine due to fear and misinformation on its effects (Alotiby & Al-Harbi, 2021). Therefore, through employing the best strategy to reduce and curb this misinformation, I aimed to create awareness on the importance of the vaccine and ensure I relay correct research information about the vaccine to medical staff and patients. This would be a challenging task for me as I had to strategize on how to communicate with the crowds and nurses who had a positive attitude towards the vaccine from the beginning. It is difficult to change an individual’s beliefs about a situation or opinion. Being a student nurse planning to speak to frontline nurses and medical staff added to my anxiety as I feared rejection being inferior to them in terms of expertise and knowledge. However, I was determined to spread awareness on the importance of the vaccine and achieve my goal regardless. This would also enhance my problem-solving skills in future scenarios.
Exploring possible strategies
The possible strategies I brainstormed and decided to explore more on after pinpointing my objective and outcome for this task were encouraging nurses to scrutinize their news sources and educating them on vaccine importance and the accurate information regarding it. Scrutinizing news resources entails consuming information from social media critically. Approximately two-thirds of Americans consume news on social media, meaning that at some point, they scroll through news stories too. Therefore, encouraging nurses and medical staff to critically analyze and search for key indicators of whether the news is accurate and timely would help stop the consumption of fake and inaccurate news, which is the key source of misinformation (Chaghari et al., 2019). The second strategy entails creating an education and training program to teach nurses more on covid-19 vaccines and their effects on human health and immunity. Education and training of nurses greatly help in creating more awareness for them and ultimately their patients, families, and the community. If nurses are aware of the details of a condition, disease, or situation, they are more likely to train the public on its importance and effects, thus promoting better health and patient outcomes (Chaghari et al., 2019).
Acting on Ideas
After thoroughly exploring my strategy options and my key objective for this task, I decided to implement the education and training program in Covid-19 vaccine for nurses. I chose this strategy because I could also include the scrutinizing of news sources into the program rather than adopt it as a single strategy. Moreover, with the demand for medical attention by patients in hospitals, nurses rarely have time to listen and scroll through social media due to long working hours. A training and education program, however, can be planned to suit their schedules. This program would include role modeling and promotion of self-learning. Role modeling entails leading by example and indirectly letting the learner follow your action (Chaghari et al., 2019). For instance, if the nurse leader and I took the vaccine in front of the other nurses and allowed them to see how it affects our daily activities, it would encourage them to take it after they observe little to no effects on health and disregard the misinformation. Promoting self-learning includes emphasizing the program’s goals and objectives to the medical staff and letting them follow their principles to assess whether the vaccine is essential both to them and their patients (Chaghari et al., 2019).
Learning and looking for effects
After implementing the education program, more nurses began taking the vaccine, with some of them attributing it to self-assessment and our emphasis on the importance of the vaccine. The program will continue being taught by other student nurses and head nurses in hospitals to ensure more nurses take vaccination more seriously as it protects their health and the general population. Moreover, the nurses started encouraging patients and individuals to be vaccinated and educating them on research and its safety. I was elated to observe a slight increase in individuals taking the vaccine after the program began.
Conclusion
Healthcare organizations face numerous problems daily, and having measures and objectives to solve these issues is crucial to ensuring they improve health and patient outcomes. This scenario helped me develop better problem-solving skills while thoroughly reflecting on my strengths, values, and weaknesses in dealing with such situations. I am now confident in dealing with future scenarios that require my prompt problem-solving skills. Moreover, I am confident I can train and educate even my superiors in some issues as knowledge is continuous, and sharing it promotes better health and patient outcomes. In addition, this scenario helped me realize that healthcare institutions should set up training and education programs to deal with sharing research information on medical conditions and pandemics such as COVID-19. Inadequate research and education lead to misinformation on crucial things such as medicine, vaccines, and treatment options in healthcare facilities. Finally, discussing this scenario has enhanced my confidence in handling similar incidences in my future practice in the healthcare sector.
References
Alotiby, A. A., & Al-Harbi, L. N. (2021). Attitudes towards COVID-19-Related Medical Misinformation among Healthcare Workers and Non-Healthcare Workers in Saudi Arabia during the Pandemic: An Online Cross-Sectional Survey. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(11), 6123. https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fijerph18116123
Annizar, A. M., Jakaria, M. H. D., Mukhlis, M., & Apriyono, F. (2020, February). Problem solving analysis of rational inequality based on IDEAL model. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1465, No. 1, p. 012033). IOP Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1465/1/012033
Chaghari, M., Saffari, M., Ebadi, A., & Ameryoun, A. (2017). Empowering education: A new model for in-service training of nursing staff. Journal of advances in medical education & professionalism, 5(1), 26. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5238493/