ASSESS CURRENT CLINICAL PRACTICES
The next step is to assess the current clinical workflow on the detoxification unit and determine what changes are needed to implement the Rapid Procedure. This can be a great opportunity to examine practices and make changes otherwise to workflow or staffing at your site. For instance, a previous site discovered that their nurses were doing various tasks that could be completed by medical assistants or other staff. Their leadership made changes, hired additional medical assistants, and distributed these tasks differently which ultimately lessened the burden on their nursing staff. Nurses then had more time to engage with patients and manage clinical care (not only for the Rapid Procedure but for all patient care). Your Implementation Team should meet early on and identify what needs to change for the adoption and implementation of the Rapid Procedure. This process is called “Site Mapping” and can be carried out across several meetings. An example “Site Mapping Guide” is available to help identify clinical processes and changes needed for implementing the Rapid Procedure for Vivitrol® induction. We expect that your site leadership and key stakeholders will have additional internal meetings to prepare and discuss changes within your organization.
While assessing your current clinical practices, we encourage you to think about the strengths and weaknesses at your site.
- What works well on your detoxification unit? What doesn’t work well?
- Are staff ready to implement a new intervention or do they need additional training in certain areas?
- Do you have adequate staffing and resources to implement the Rapid Procedure?
TIP: We encourage your leadership to pave the way for the changes needed. Again, this can be a great opportunity to examine clinical practices on your detox unit and make other changes to optimize general workflow.
PLAN FOR CHANGE
Now that you have mapped out what’s needed for the implementation of the Rapid Procedure, it’s time to put it into action. Your site’s Implementation Team can help prioritize and carry out these action items. An example list of action items is available here.
ESTABLISH PLAN FOR MONITORING AND PERFORMANCE
It’s important to think about how this intervention can fold into your current quality improvement practices and monitoring. Leadership at your site can help to establish a plan for monitoring and tracking performance with the Rapid Procedure.