¶ … Healthcare Workplaces Today Considered True Boundaryless The concept of the boundaryless organization demonstrates a trend in healthcare and elsewhere that claims that an organization is most effective when it is collaborating with all inside and outside interests to build a dynamic workplace that works best for everyone. The challenges might simply be information sharing but it can also take the form of communication for change. The health care field is an ever changing network of core and support personnel as well as a whole pool of individual consumers that utilize services and might have an important role to play in positive change. This work will briefly discuss the historical utilization of boundaryless organization tool by looking at what techniques have been most effective for sharing information and ideas, what techniques were ineffective in the past and at how these techniques might be used in the future i.e. how these techniques might be applied or modified in a healthcare work environment, and how technology can impact this process.

What Works

Inter-employee communications have been a successful aspect of reducing boundaries in most healthcare settings as inter-departmental employees frequently have a good idea of where others in the department are coming from. The inter-departmental employees are the most likely to see a need for change and/or greater sharing and make changes either formally or informally to redirect or alter best practices in such a way that they best meet the needs of both the staff and the patient. In the past there may have been hierarchical barriers to inter-employee communication but such standards and practices are significantly reduced in numbers and many more organizations, including mine demonstrate a keen sense of collective communication and change from the bottom up as well as the top town....

Additionally, once a consensus has been developed within the core staff the support staff and extra-department staff members that might affect change are then supported in communicating with core staff about how that change might be affected and how to incorporate it in the change process. Lastly, these inter-employee and extra-employee communications work best when there is a recognized problem that needs a solution, such as a work process that is slowed by something that all involved are doing or not doing or a physical/environmental issue that can be altered to make a process work better. These collaborative changes also work well when only one area (such as nurses or technicians) are aware of a work slowdown and others must be made aware of it to resolve it. They also work well when the collective body is made aware of a statistical change that needs to be addressed to make the department more sustainable and better serve the patient. The days of the lone physician are ending as well as the days of the independent nurse or support staff, or even an independent lone hospital as collaboration takes hold as the best approach to challenges of patient care (Saba, Villela, Chen, Hammer, & Bodenheimer, 2012, pp. 169-173; Magaw, 2012, p. 8).
What Doesn't Work

Hierarchical change processes were popular in the past where the issue or problem was addressed by the upper staff members and then a change was either implemented or demanded of the subordinate staff to resolve the problem. It has been determined clearly that such change plans often do not create real change, effect an understanding for a need to change and in fact create boundaries that reduce moral and separate groups from one another. The hierarchical work change and plant change plans work only when the individuals providing the problem/solution scenario create buy in from staff by effectively communicating the real need for change and demanding implementation that is seen as both practical and logical and effects some change that makes the workplace better and serves the patient and staff better. When such buy in is not achieved within a large number of core staff change implementation will often result in confusion as well as possible attrition, where the change happens for a short time and then staff return to a previous less desirable work process later. Examples of what some would consider approaching on boundarylessness that might occur within a hierarchical…