Problem Identification
The African Americans in Brooklyn comprise of 35 percent of the total population. The actual population of the blacks is 862, 864. The females are 50.2% of the population. On age distribution, persons below 6 years represent 6.8%, 6-19 years represent 14.5%, 20-64 years represent 69.6% and those above 64% represent 9.1% of the total population. In the last five years, the morbidity rates for cancer have been on the rise.
For instance, the incidence rate for cancer has risen from 22 per 1000 per year in 2008 to 28 per 1000 per year in 2010. However, the prevalence rate has decreased from 20 per 1000 per year in 2008 to the present 18 per 1000 per year in 2010. The mortality rate for cancer has increased from 32 per 100,000 to 48 per 100,000 from 2008 to 2010 (Brooklyn Center, 2010). As observed at the population assessment of cancer prevalence, it is necessary to introduce changes that will be effective in managing cancer management within the African American population in Brooklyn.
Change model and rationale
Watson’s theory of human caring reviews the necessary external elements that determine the success of human caring. The main components of nurse preparation, caring processes, and traspersonal caring relationship. The above concept model reviews the elements of discovery, teaching, healing, and service as a holistic endavor in provision of quality care that is adoptable by a nurse. The elements of collaboration, knowledgeablity, and advocacy within the model are critical in providing accountable care especially when the patient requires special care (DeNisco & Barker, 2013). Cancer prevalence pose a great risk for nursing facilities as they reflect on the effectiveness of nursing care in a health facility.
Therefore, the proposed change will create a proactive and counter-preventive nurse practicing environment to promote good and quality care for desirable patient outcome. As indicated in the Watson’s theory of human caring, the cancer patients’ community has both normative and comparative needs. In fact, direct nursing intervention as proposed by the theory will ensure that the normative and comparative needs are addressed in a sustainable manner within the acceptable ethics of nursing in managing cancer prevalence (Kulbok, Thatcher, Park, & Meszaros, 2012).
The proposed change will be in the form of provision of complete medical support, counseling support, and social support to ensure that members of this population who suffer from cancer experience quick and complete recovery. There is need to establish a social trust for providing cancer medical services to the poor in this community at subsidized costs within the average income of households in the community.
Besides, the health centers should introduce stronger programs and structures within the youth, aged, and social centers to offer counseling services to the community in the form of emotional, and psychological counseling for those suffering from cancer. In addition, the community should develop a strong community volunteers program to facilitate the needs of the cancer community (Kulbok et al. 2012).
Population health and how the change will impact it
Despite the fact that health facilities within Brooklyn have implemented numerous interventions to manage cancer prevalence, little effort has been carried out in terms of implementation. The current intervention mechanism has loopholes that implementers may take advantage of. For instance, moral and financial support has been limited to pre-treatment care. Therefore, there is need to introduce the aspects of complete patient support in the form of financial, social, and emotional support to cancer patients as part of holistic health care.
As opined by Marquis and Huston (2012), “planning is critically important to and precedes all other management functions. Without adequate planning, the management process fails since organizational needs and objectives cannot be met” (Marquis & Huston, 2012, p. 32). Therefore, it is important to align the proposed change to ensure that those suffering from cancer within the community are well taken care of.
For the proposed change to be successful, it is important to create a clear and accurate documentation as part of the community assessment and diagnosis results to communicate the proposal to the stakeholders in community health. The procedure should be aligned to the present community initiatives on cancer management through constant and continuous training about the requirements in the proposed change (McCarthy Adedokun, & Fairchild, 2014).
Strategy and action steps in implementing the change
As indicated in the Lewin change theory, the steps in implementing the proposal to manage cancer diagnosis and treatment within Brooklyn will involve research, documentation and training, implementation, and evaluation. Under the research, the change agency will carry out explicit analysis of best practices in other communities in order to create a flexible and sustainable change platform (Weick & Quinn, 2009).
The second stage will involve documentation and training. Under this step, the change agencies will create implementation documentation to make the proposed change part of the treatment guideline in the cancer diagnosis and treatment. The stage is also characterized by creating flexible training program for the community health nurses, who will be the main change implementers. Implementation stage will involve the actual process of testing and practicing the proposed change (Marquis and Huston, 2012). The last stage will involve evaluation of the effectiveness of the proposed change, in terms of reviewing the number of successful cancer recovery and perception of the community on quality of cancer health care after implementation against the same number before implementation (Weick and Quinn, 2009).
Evaluating the proposed change
The success of the proposed change will be evaluated on the basis of patient recovery and perception of the community on effectiveness of the cancer diagnosis and treatment plans before and after its implementation. The evaluation will be done three months after its implementation. The parameters which will define the success will be the reduced percentage of members of community who can access affordable and quality cancer treatment services. When the number of those who can access improved services increases by 85%, the proposed change will be declared successful in the community. The success will also be measured by assessing the level of acceptance of the proposed change by the community health nurses and the community members. Acceptance level of 70% will be declared successful.
Advantages and disadvantages of the proposed change
The main skills required to implement the proposed change include project management skills, nursing evaluation skills, and intrinsic communication skills since the proposed change involve proactive participation and self evaluation (Marquis and Huston, 2012).
The success of the proposed change management plan will depend on the acceptance and the progress monitoring system. With the support the shareholders, the proposed change will create a holistic and inclusive environment for managing cancer diagnosis and treatment within Brooklyn. In addition, the proposed change will support the current cancer diagnosis and treatment manuals in order to make cancer more manageable by the vulnerable members of the Brooklyn community (Kulbok et al. 2012). However, the proposed change may be abused by some cancer patients who do not belong to the vulnerable group. Besides, the volunteers may face hostility in some areas for one reason or another.
References
Brooklyn Center. (2010). Quick Facts from the US Census Bureau. Web.
DeNisco, M., & Barker, M. (2013). Advance practice nursing: Evolving roles for the transformation of the profession (2nd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Barlett Learning.
Kulbok, P., Thatcher, E., Park, E., & Meszaros, P. (2012). Evolving public health nursing roles: Focus on community participatory health promotion and prevention. The Online Journal of the American Nurses Association, 17(2), 12-38.
Marquis, L., & Huston, J. (2012). Leadership roles and management functions in nursing (7th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer.
McCarthy, R., Adedokun, W., & Fairchild, M. (2014). Preventing falls in the elderly long term care facilities. Web.
Weick, K., & Quinn, R. (2009). Organizational change and development. Annual Review Psychology, 50(2), 361-386.