DIT and Healthcare delivery - Modern healthcare is quite complex, as are the relationships between various stakeholders within the system -- patients, family, specialists, staff, administration, medical personnel, regulatory bodies, insurance, public and private health personnel and even the political sphere. DIT heals measure the breadth and number of organizational units affected, the amount of communication across organizational lines, and the manner in which individual groups interact proactively. Innovation theory in health organizations often induces two cycles: 1) poorly performing organizations that respond with rule bound behaviors and indeed perpetuates poor performance and; 2) beneficent responses in which better performing organizations have autonomy which reinforces their stronger performance (Lundblad, 2003). For organizations to remain competitive, they must adopt the more proactive stance from DIT and find ways to both streamline and self-critique.

DIT and Current Nursing Practice -- Because of the complex nature of nursing practice, combined with new expectations for many nurses (e.g. stronger and more robust clinical roles, more teaching and interaction requirements, larger patient loads, etc.); there are more and more technical demands upon nurses. At times, the increased pressure from so much information, new technical specifications, and increased loads can be mitigated by using the essential concepts of DIT strategies to apply innovation and adaptation processes. The underlying assumption, of course, is that the DIT model assumes change is promoted through ideas or information introduced by people with whom one can identify. This is critical within the nursing paradigm -- the carative models of Watson and Peplau for instance, show that emulation and modeling can be most effective among a group of people within an organization over time -- and how to speed this process up to its maximum efficacy (Sunderman and Johnson, 2008)..

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lundblad, J. (2003). A Review and Critique of Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Theory

As it Applies to Organizations. Organization Development Journal. 21 (4):

50-9.

Scholarly material that focuses on a demonstration on why innovation is important in organizational...

The four primary elements of Rogers' theory are described (innovation, communication, time and social system) with an emphasis on how the theory applies within and most especially across organizations.
Sunderman, C. And Johnson, C. (2008, August 4). Complexity Theory Versus

Organizational Theory Guiding Electronic Nursing Documentation System

Design. N411.Duke University Educational Practicum and Publications. Retrieved from: http://www.duke.edu/~cls42/complexity%20theory%20versus%20organizational%20theory%20guiding%20electronic%20nursing%20documentation%20system%20design.pdf

Scholarly article focusing on how documentation and new electronic issues in nursing can be improved using adaptive systems and diffusion of innovation theory. DIT, for instance, has an innate system requirement that, for nursing, can become a very positive self-fulfilling prophecy and improvement in the contemporary nursing experience.

Warner, K., Franklin, C.; Streeter, C. (1998). New Directions in Systems Theory: Chaos

and Complexity. Social Work. 43( 4): 357-62.

Scholarly article critiquing von Bertalanffy and others and their views of a general system theory that applies to any open systems paradigm. Looking at the theoretical model, the authors ask how this theory can be used in contemporary social science research, and whether it has appropriate levels of relevance. Their conclusion is that while GST may not hold all the answers, science is not always linear - chaos and complexity theory may interact, but that GST has relevance when combined with other theories in the social sciences.

Weckowicz, T. (2000). Ludwig Von Bertalanffy: A Pioneer of General Systems Theory.

University of Alberta Center for Systems Research Working Paper. CSR 89-2.

Retrieved from: http://www.richardjung.cz/bert1.pdf

Scholarly article, but suited for the advanced lay person. Biographical in nature for first part of article, then an emphasis on his contributions to mechanism, vitalism, and open systems theory. Superior bibliography and focus upon how Von Berthalanffy strove to take complex situations in the natural world and help to simplify them theoretically.