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October 19, 2004



Actually management was all set to totally buy in. Most projects have to address matters of FTEs, productivity, cost, or at the very least, patient satisfaction surveys. So I'd done all that. What I forgot was that I was trying to get people to utilize a web-based device. So I should have been more in tune with the content to be provided. Everyone expected to put the message boards up and everyone would magically start accessing the board and interacting. This totally didn't happen. I forgot that people will sit down and crank up a web page only if they perceive that they will get something from it, either information or service or entertainment. I think if I were higher in the ranks, I would just assign people the task of contributing new content to the board, so that people would have a reason to read it. Between all the committee members, charge nurses and clinical leaders, I could get new content daily. But the leadership I'm working with just doesn't understand this. I'm not totally giving up. After I do more research, I'll take another swing at this.


I'm so sorry to hear about your php board efforts not progressing forward.. I wouldn't call it a failure, but merely a 'roadblock'.. 'gap'...

You are what most folks call an "early adopter" infact.. I'd have to say all of us siblings and significant others are definitely a crowd of early adopters. We love the newest gizmo, the neat way to do things, always looking to optimize how we operate.

Unfortunately, your work environment is not of an early adopter environment, but more a follower environment.. (make it a standard in the industry.. and its like cattle to the trough...)

Shaking things up at the workplace can be very difficult, especially when people continue to say.. "but this is how we've done it for years" as their answer to proposals. You never know, usually ideas have to sit for awhile, or maybe one day, you'll get a gizmo guy in management there.. like any wave of change.. its all about the politics.. and if you can get the key stakeholders especially the ones that have to sign the checks to pay for things to buy into your ideas.. that's usually how to get things to progress forward.. plant the idea.. make sure the guy that's paying for it is going to look like a hero.. and bada bing bada boom.. next thing you know everyone's on the bandwagon... its a game... but if you play it, it can be a win-win for everyone... Usually it comes to, how can this save us money? Just how will we save time? or will time in meetings now be time searching on a message board? Can we eliminate an FTE by investing in this project? And That, will always get a rise out of everyone, especially nurses who already experience shortages and patient overload.. Unfortunately everything comes down to "da benjamins" and not always about 'quality', its the good companies that can produce quality at the lowest cost that always win... maybe its taking a step back.. since your project requires capital investment, and looking at ways to still attack the problem without capital investment.. (bumming off existing systems in your environment.. or maybe making it a more global adoption so the costs are offset by other departments.. ) maybe its doing crazy scientific things like getting documented time of meetings and totalling it up to get a baseline, the analyzing the possible ways to change process w/o spending money that are needed.... just a thought...

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