The purpose of this paper is to conduct an organizational assessment and analyze strategies to lead and manage organizational change through the lens of an Advanced Practice Nurse Leader.

Change is inevitable! Successful organizations thrive because they have a vision, a mission and a strategy, and when faced with change they are quick to take action. They are successful because they understand their clients’ needs, respond to their employees and react to the changing times. One sure way to success is the way organizational change is managed. Change is nearly unattainable without leadership support and a strong management team. Leaders are a foundation to the success of an organization. The purpose of this paper is to conduct an organizational assessment and analyze strategies to lead and manage organizational change through the lens of an Advanced Practice Nurse Leader.

Graduate education and Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) role development include independent inquiry and the development of effective communication and writing skills. This writing assignment is designed to assist the student in identifying and analyzing strategies to lead and manage organizational change.

1. Select a healthcare organization and conduct an organizational assessment; identify the structure, leadership and decision-making processes of the organization and the relationship among these three organizational characteristics.

2. Next, select one of the eight recommendations from the RWJF/IOM The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health report.

a. Recommendation #1: Remove scope-of-practice barriers. Advanced Practice Nurses should be able to practice to the full extent of their education and training

b. Recommendation #2: Expand opportunities for nurses to lead and diffuse collaborative improvement efforts. Private and public funders, health care organizations, nursing education programs, and nursing associations should expand opportunities for nurses to lead and manage collaborative efforts with physicians and other members of the health care team to conduct research and to redesign and improve practice environments and health systems. These entities should also provide opportunities for nurses to diffuse successful practices.

c. Recommendation #3: Implement nurse residency programs. State boards of nursing, accrediting bodies, the federal government, and health care organizations should take actions to support nurses’ completion of a transition-to-practice program (nurse residency) after they have completed a prelicensure or advanced practice degree program or when they are transitioning into new clinical practice areas.

d. Recommendation #4: Increase the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree to 80 percent by 2020. Academic nurse leaders across all schools of nursing should work together to increase the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree from 50 to 80 percent by 2020. These leaders should partner with education accrediting bodies, private and public funders, and employers to ensure funding, monitor progress, and increase the diversity of students to create a workforce prepared to meet the demands of diverse populations across the lifespan.

e. Recommendation #5: Double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020. Schools of nursing, with support from private and public funders, academic administrators and university trustees, and accrediting bodies, should double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020 to add to the cadre of nurse faculty and researchers, with attention to increasing diversity.

f. Recommendation #6: Ensure that nurses engage in lifelong learning. Accrediting bodies, schools of nursing, health care organizations, and continuing competency educators from multiple health professions should collaborate to ensure that nurses and nursing students and faculty continue their education and engage in lifelong

learning to gain the competencies needed to provide care for diverse populations across the lifespan.

g. Recommendation #7: Prepare and enable nurses to lead change to advance health. Nurses, nursing education programs, and nursing associations should prepare the nursing workforce to assume leadership positions across all levels, while public, private, and governmental health care decision makers should ensure that leadership positions are available to and filled by nurses.

h. Recommendation #8: Build an infrastructure for the collection and analysis of interprofessional health care workforce data. The National Health Care Workforce Commission, with oversight from the Government Accountability Office and the Health Resources and Services Administration, should lead a collaborative effort to improve research and the collection and analysis of data on health care workforce requirements. The Workforce Commission and the Health Resources and Services Administration should collaborate with state licensing boards, state nursing workforce centers, and the Department of Labor in this effort to ensure that the data are timely and publicly accessible.

3. The Organizational Assessment and Practice Issue Analysis should be conducted on an organization in which you are perhaps familiar with or one in which you have gathered information through interviews of organizational personnel. The organization selected should remain anonymous and should not be identified.

4. Summarize the impact of the recommendation organizationally by discussing its magnitude and the potential or actual impact on, for example, Advanced Practice Nursing, patient care, quality, satisfaction, morale, the practice environment and/or the organizational outcomes.