Sourcebook : 2.3 How to avoid common problems

If a team has great results for a few patients, but no else adopts the changes, it has not made much headway. Early in the process, team members need to tell others about what they're doing to make colleagues curious to know more so that others will be more willing to try the team's changes. In this way, teams do good work for their patients while laying the groundwork for further improvements.

• Announce the improvements being made, including aims and schedule.
• Post results where staff can see them. For example, post a chart showing the percentage of patients on the unit with pain less than 4 out of 10 and update the data each week or each day.
• Promote the topic in newsletters and pay-check stuffers, and on bulletin boards.
• Engage senior leaders. Update the senior leader sponsoring the team's work on changes and results and what he or she could do to promote the change. Promotion examples include putting the project on the senior management meeting agenda, mentioning the work at board meetings, writing an article or letter about it, or inviting leaders to attend team meetings or visit patients involved in the intervention.
• Train others to follow the team's lead. Be sure to provide adequate training to the staff members who are beginning replication of the changes.
• Talk to leaders about their own experiences with end-of-life care, good and bad, to remind them of how important this work is.

This text is derived from the book Improving Care for the End of Life : A Sourcebook for Health Care Managers and Clinicians.