Healthcare Project Management

Healthcare Project Management

Communication Strategies for Multi department Project Teams

Empirical studied have shown that communication is the critical differentiator of healthcare project management as compared to other sectors. Unlike its counterparts, healthcare project management involves many types of people classified under various departments and job categories; thus, the need for clear communication (Dwyer et al., 2013).  In such a sector, staff turnover remains the leading cause of healthcare mistakes. For instance, if a senior registered nurse and gastroenterologists communicate poorly to the incoming colleague about the amount of Ryzodeg insulin for administration, there would be poor health outcomes (Montiro et al., 2014). In an attempt to align project teams for quality health care operations, this nurse and project manager should be cautious when employing both verbal and non-verbal communication. Whereas the former centers around spoken word, non-verbal or body language comprise of accent, emotional speech, bodily contact, posture, facial gesture, direct gaze, and other relevant approaches.  Quality project outcomes and healthcare staff benefits depend on robust interdepartmental communication, stakeholder involvement and risk identification, and management.

Sound project management depends on three communication models, namely linear, interactive, and transactional. Whereas the linear model comprises a messenger, the sender, receiver, and noise, the interactive model focus on the response offered after one has received given information (Parson, 2016). On the other hand, the transactional model recognizes and emphasizes how the dynamic nature of interpersonal communication, thereby giving communicators many roles (Dwyer et al., 2013). This project manager could improve communication by listening to their senders without interrupting them.  This leader should also consider displaying empathy as well as understanding project team members.

At the same time, the project manager should also stay focused on the conversation without forcing any of the team members to stick to a given idea unwillingly. It is also critical for such a leader to use the type of body language which caters for concerns and interest of project team members (Dwyer et al., 2013).  The need to avoid engaging in long explanations and, more so, give project teams full attention while in the course of interaction remains relevant in this project. One should also ask team members questions to offer clarity on specific issues.

Types of Risks and Stakeholders Needed in the Project

Project management requires that the manager considers various risks and project stakeholders for the project validity and successful outcomes. Regarding project risks, there are multiple categories of project risks depending on the type of project, type of contract, project size, the complexity of the agreement, team expertise, among other factors. For this project, the manager should include the cost risks, which could emerge as a result of sparse estimation of the accuracy and scope creep (Seithikurippu et al., 2015). Secondly, the project plan should also contain the schedule risk to address the prolonged duration of the project in prevalence (Ray, 2017). More so, one should also include performance risk to deal with inconsistency in project specifications.

The project manager must never ignore the role of stakeholders in a project of this magnitude for validity and quality outcomes. Firstly, the project must have internal stakeholders such as the topmost executives in the health facility (project sponsors), project team affiliates, the project leader, peers, resource administrator as well as internal customers (Seithikurippu et al., 2015). Moreover, this project needs to have external stakeholders such as the government representatives, customers, contractors/subcontractors, as well as suppliers.  The most critical type of stakeholders in this project are the executives play or project sponsors. These group of people provides resources as they also enforce project decisions to ensure that it attains quality outcomes.  The project manager needs to deal with all stakeholders throughout the project life for quality outcomes.

Benefits of Healthcare Project on Healthcare Staff

The project in prevalence could impact the healthcare staff members by giving quality knowledge, abilities, skills, and traits in achieving future tasks. This episode emerges in the sense that the project would serve as a work experience, a pre-service avenue for useful expertise or in-service coaching (Pojola et al., 2016). Besides, this project would improve the understanding of healthcare staff by reducing the communication barrier between project team members for future working relationships (Dwyer et al., 2013). Either, this initiative is likely to expose all the staff members to the healthcare resources whose information and documents are a source of knowledge for future use.

Staff members would also interact with new technologies hence gaining more experience for future work activities. This project would enable healthcare staff members to develop new approaches for cooperating with others and solving future stalemates (Seithikurippu et al., 2015).  Team members would also learn how to deal with diverse groups hence developing skills of collaboration. The informal conversations among project teams could also help to construct confidence and qualitative expression, thus sharing such experiences in future activities.