Innovation Adoption: Lessons Learned From a “Best Place to Work” Organization

• Author / Creator

  Kari Krell

• In a move to better meet patient needs and address health services challenges, there are global changes occurring in the fundamental way health services are provided and managed. Health systems are faced with sustainability issues, political uncertainty, fiscal constraints, and challenges of rapid technology change. During these tumultuous times, health leaders, practitioners, and researchers are working hard to improve patient outcomes, while creating opportunities for growth, efficiencies, and enhanced patient experiences. This is further complicated by advancements in technology continuously disrupting traditional business models and processes. To address the challenges faced by the health system, organizations are exploring ways to become more agile and adaptive. An emerging focus of health leaders is investment in innovation for building organizational capacity to influence sustainability and growth for the future. Congruent with initiatives focused on innovation adoption, are advancement of workers’ skills and competencies to manage the rapid pace of technology change and to translate new evidence and knowledge to their practice for the benefit of quality patient care.
  
  Although leadership is seen as critical in shaping organizational cultures that successfully adopt innovation, there are few studies that explore the perceptions of health leaders to understand what they have learned from implementing innovation in clinical practice settings. In this study, I used a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to gain an understanding from a purposive sample of ten health leaders, of their experiences and perceptions of working with innovation in an acute care hospital. Thematic analysis of the data suggested nurturing a person-centred culture improves high quality, safe, and compassionate healthcare. To achieve support for innovation, a greater emphasis on creating positive, well-trained, workplaces that facilitate job satisfaction and production is warranted. Recommendations for further research include exploration of leadership development of person-centred competencies, relational nuances between leaders and workers, and defined evaluation of innovation impact on care provision and positive work environments in clinical practice settings.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Leadership
  • Clinical Practice
  • Person- Centred Care
  • Innovation
  • Healthcare

• Graduation date

  Fall 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-qkex-cs60

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.