Phelp LPNtoRN 6e

CHAPTER 3 • Adapting to Change 83

Not only do nurses face the challenges of personal changes but they also encounter the changes that their clients face. The processes of stress and adaptation, and the coping strategies that individuals use, are important to understand. Nurses are also involved with organizational changes, which can involve complex processes personally and col lectively. The effects of change are varied and often depend on individual and group coping mechanisms. Nursing and healthcare in general is ever changing. Although it is impossible to pre dict what changes will occur in the future, it is certain that change will be continuous. As you confront the changes occurring in your life as you return to school, you are in a unique position to develop new coping strategies to ease the transition process and experience the positive outcomes of change. Developing strengths during this transition will give you new knowledge of how to both be an effective change agent and assist clients and colleagues experiencing change. Exercise 3.1 Recruit another student, peer, or friend to assist you with the following exercise: Create a change situation that involves role-playing a client who is faced with a new diagnosis of heart disease. 1. Determine what factors may motivate this client to change their lifestyle. 2. Identify possible restraining and driving forces of the change. 3. Discuss the possible effects of change related to the impact of the diagnosis and the need for a change in lifestyle. 4. Develop a plan that will assist the client to move effectively through Bridges' three phases of the transition they will experience with the change. Exercise 3.2 Given a case study of a planned organizational change in the healthcare industry: 1. Identify if the change is transactional or transformational. 2. Apply the three phases of Bridges’ transition to the organization. a. What endings are in play and how well are they being managed? What else could be done? b. What characteristics of the neutral zone are in play? c. What new beginnings are evident in the case? 3. Apply concepts from one of the authors in the section Adjusting to Change. What characteristics are evident in the case? What strategies could the nurse manager use to assist those having difficulty with the change? Exercise 3.3 (Optional but Fun Exercise) Choose one of the following: 1. Read the short story Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions , by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber (2017). Evaluate the behavior of those in the above case study and which penguins are representative of which STUDENT Exercises

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