Partnership-Based Health Care: Suggestions for Effective Application

Societal transformation often starts with one visionary and a compelling idea. However, if there are no followers, the idea quickly becomes marginalized. It “takes a village” to build a movement, and the more system layers that can be addressed, the more likely the transformation will take hold. This article describes the framework for creating the necessary changes for partnership-based health care. It also makes suggestions for ensuring successful application of partnership-based systems change. This article is for all readers seeking to apply partnership principles in their own fields of influence

Making the Choice Clear: Partnership and Domination Examples from Nursing Practice

Health care is in desperate need of transformation, which will require careful scrutiny of the current culture. Riane Eisler’s Cultural Transformation Theory (1987, 2007) and particularly its application in partnership-based health care (Eisler & Potter, 2014), offers nurses and other health care providers a framework to clarify choices regarding their organization’s culture. In this article, nursing leaders offer examples of common domination and partnership behaviors at play in health care today. The intent is to provide a clear choice and increase awareness of the stakes of failing to move towards partnership

Improving Interdisciplinary Relationships in Primary Care with the Implementation of TeamSTEPPS

A major challenge in healthcare is lack of interdisciplinary collaboration (O’Daniel & Rosenstein, 2008). The Institute of Medicine report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System (1999), shows that errors often occur due to lapses in partnership and communication. This article describes the implementation of TeamSTEPPS, an evidence-based tool for optimizing staff relationships and partnership, in a clinic in which a change in the care model had affected interprofessional collaboration and teamwork, threatening healthcare outcomes and staff engagement. The implementation of TeamSTEPPS, customized using elements of IDEO’s (2015) Human-Centered Design, shifted the culture of the clinic towards partnership, resulting in improved staff perceptions of teamwork and statistically significant improvements in the quality of patient care

One World, One Standard for Burn Care: Nursing's Role in Global Health

In 1978, a landmark United Nations conference in Alma-Ata declared the goal of health for all by the year 2000 (WHO, 1978). Yet, today significant disparities exist between the health care afforded individuals in resource-limited countries and those in the industrialized world. Nursing, as a global profession, can become a powerful force for change so that better health is universally achieved. Problem/Background: This project started with a partnership between a burn center in the United States and a pediatric burn center (Burn Center) in Peru, a country in which it is estimated that 15,000 children endure burn injuries each year (Huby-Vidaurre, 2016). Most are under the age of five, and suffer scald burns from pots with hot liquids left to cool on the floors of their homes. Pressure garment therapy (PGT) is a major treatment to reduce scarring for pediatric burn survivors in the United States since the early 1970s, but is unavailable in Peru. Strategy: The Doctor of Nursing Practice project leader worked with the Burn Center team to develop a plan to use PGT as an intervention to address disfiguring scarring among pediatric burn survivors, utilizing the twinning approach. Methods: This quality improvement project involved interdisciplinary collaboration and international partnerships between resource-rich and resource-challenged nations. Obtaining supplies needed to promote PGT in Peru required cultivating relationships with many people in the United States, including translators and interpreters to assist in overcoming language barriers among the participants, manufacturers and distributors of pressure garments to donate fabrics, and people regularly traveling to Peru who transported the donated PGT materials. It also involved working closely with the Burn Center team on developing a culture conducive to conforming to an international standard of practice. Results: Resources were successfully leveraged to build a sustainable PGT program for all pediatric burn survivors in Peru. Conclusion: Forging partnerships between the U.S. and Peru utilizing the twinning approach led to implementation of PGT, allowing for a best practice standard of care in the treatment of pediatric burns

Transforming Global Leadership Skills in Graduate Nursing Programs Using an Intercultural Setting and a Case Study on Refugees

  Transformation of our world to a more just and equitable system will require a fundamental shift from a domination approach to a partnership-based approach. In nursing and health care, this shift will require a global perspective with culturally humble providers and systems. In this article we share the experience of our international course Leadership in Nursing – a Global Approach, a joint project of the University of Iceland Faculty of Nursing and the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. This collaborative immersion course offers a model of global partnership-based health-care education. International partnership-based collaboration in nursing and health-care education prepares students and faculty to take an active role in transforming global systems.     &nbsp

Improving Primary Care with Human-Centered Design and Partnership-Based Leadership

Objective: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to empower and activate first-line staff (FLS) to improve the six-month depression remission rate in a primary care clinic. Background: Lack of workforce engagement has been identified as an emerging national problem in health care and health care leaders have urged practice redesign to foster the Triple Aim of improved population health, improved care experience, and reduced cost of care (Berwick et al., 2008). Depression is difficult to manage and often exacerbates chronic illnesses and shortens lifespans, yet despite known effective treatments, six-month remission rates are low and care practices are often inadequate. Engaging in empowering leadership behaviors has demonstrated improvement in motivation, work outcomes, and empowerment in various industry settings across the world. Core approaches include: enhancing staff self-determination, encouraging participation in decision-making, and ensuring that staff have the knowledge and tools to achieve their performance goals, in addition to leadership communications that increase confidence in staff’s potential to perform at high levels, and their recognition that their efforts have an impact on improving organizational effectiveness. Methods: In this outpatient setting, care was siloed, staff were disengaged and a hierarchical paradigm was evident. Human-centered design principles were employed to intensively explore stakeholders’ experiences and to deeply engage end users in improving depression remission rates by creating, participating, and partnering in solutions. Leadership was educated in and deployed empowering leadership behaviors, which were synergistic with design thinking, and fostered empowerment. Results: Pre- and post-surveys demonstrated statistically significant improvement in empowerment. The six-month depression remission rate increased 167%, from 7.3% (N=261) to 19.4% (N=247). Conclusion: The convergence of empowering leadership behaviors and human-centered design, offers great promise for improved patient outcomes, staff empowerment, and promotion of partnership

Welcome to the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies

oai:pubs.lib.umn.edu:article/86Welcome to the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, dedicated to sharing new knowledge and successful applications of Riane Eisler’s partnership paradigm: a new perspective on human possibilities increasingly utilized, explored, and expanded by others

Quarterly Publication, and Invitation to Artists

The mission of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies is to be an anthology for scholarly writing about the art and science of partnership, with contributions from both academicians and practitioners. Our vision is to be a vehicle for cultural transformation from domination to partnership. We are moving to a quarterly publication schedule in 2016, and invite artists in all media to participate in the partnership movement by submitting cover art

Planetary Grand Challenges: A Call for Interdisciplinary Partnerships

Universities have traditionally been places where individual scholars work on individual topics, in individual disciplines, with individual funding. Even though large research institutions include all the major disciplines, faculty and students remain in their schools or colleges, rarely crossing the campus to interact. Matters do not improve once knowledge is generated. Each discipline has its own journals, its own conferences, and its own professional organizations. The academy was designed to support unparalleled expertise in specialized knowledge. However, universities are beginning to realize that the greatest challenges we face are systems problems and can only be solved by systems thinking and systems solutions. Climate change, antibiotic resistance, water scarcity, and unsustainable population growth are just a few of the planetary health crises that require interdisciplinary partnerships to solve. Fortunately, we are beginning to see early signs of a shift toward, and even normalization of, interdisciplinary collaboration. In fact, some national grants require team members from different fields as a stipulation for funding. Interdisciplinary research permits cross-field benefits in which the synergy of two or more knowledge sets is greater than the sum of its parts. Innovation increases and previously elusive solutions become possible. The field of partnership studies closely aligns with the vision and mission of interdisciplinarity and offers a philosophical framework to guide teaching and research

Building a Leadership Culture for Environmental Health in a Nurse-Led Clinic

Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century (Costello et al., 2009). Temperature shifts caused by greenhouse gases have negative health impacts such as worsening of chronic diseases and increases in vector-borne diseases (American Public Health Association, 2016), which nurses are ethically responsible to address (American Nurses Association, 2015). At an interdisciplinary nurse-led clinic, staff were not prepared to assist patients in building resiliency related to the health impacts of climate change or to implement environmental sustainability in their workplace. Based on principles of partnership-based healthcare (Eisler & Potter, 2014), this project included Climate Conversations - sharing stories, values, and knowledge about climate change – (Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light, 2010) and evidence-based transformational leadership. The Nurses’ Environmental Awareness Tool (Schenk et al., 2015) was used to survey staff before and after they participated in behavioral interventions to incorporate environmental sustainability at their workplace. Compared to baseline, staffs’ knowledge of environmental sustainability increased significantly (p