Teaching Your Team to Be an Effective Team

Nursing Forum Read the case study below and respond. You are the evening charge nurse of a medical unit. The staff on your unit has voiced displeasure in how requests for days off are handled. Your manager has given you the task of forming a committee and reviewing your present policy regarding requests for days off on the unit. On your committee are four LPNs, three CNAs, and five RNs. All shifts are represented.

There are three men among the group members, and there is a fairly broad range of ethnic and cultural groups. Tomorrow will be your fourth meeting, and you are becoming a bit frustrated because the meetings do not seem to be accomplishing much to reach the objectives that the group was charged to meet. The objective was to develop a fair method to handle special requested days off that were not part of the normal rotation.

On the first meeting, you spent time getting to know the members and identified the objective. Various committee members contacted other hospitals, and others did a literature search to determine how other institutions handled this matter. During the second meeting, this material was reviewed by all members. At the last meeting, the group was very contentious. In fact, several raised their voices. Others sat quietly and some seemed to pout. Few could agree on anything. One LPN thought that the RNs were over represented.

One RN thought the policy should be separated into three different policies-one for each staff classification. What do you think are the next steps for you to take as facilitator of this group? What could be done to bring this group together and reach the objective? Support your answer with citations from Chapter 19 & 21 in your text. The ad hoc committee has skewed its focus too far into relationships, allowing the emotional needs and fundamental disagreements to take center stage.

Following the emotional and conflict tangents so far afield has resulted in a situation where the members of the committee do not feel respected during their participation, nor do they believe as a whole that continued meetings will result in a collaborative solution to the problem. As the committee leader, I need to guide the members to a more balanced position in which they are able to focus on tasks and relationships.

Using the group task roles framework, I would begin by observing -- with carefully chosen words -- where the group is at with respect to their dealings with relationships and clarifying where they are in their dealings with tasks. Practically speaking, I can see the SBAR method working to support this communication need as I have outlined it. The Situation component is a summary of what the group has accomplished to date.