
Identify stages of the transtheoretical model of change in health care and compare Lewin's and Kotter's theories, while outlining the project lifecycle and common barriers with tools to overcome them.
Explore how change management guides healthcare projects by applying the transtheoretical model (TTM) to navigate stages of behavioral change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and termination.
Explore Kurt Lewin's unfreeze, change, and freeze as a practical change management framework, emphasizing preparation, motivation, and support; and extend the model with Kotter to apply change as a process.
Unfreeze establishes urgency and honest discussion about threats like rising readmissions and budget impact. It then forms a guiding coalition, builds a stakeholder register, and outlines vision and communication.
Empower broad action by removing barriers and conducting risk assessments to anticipate obstacles. Generate short term wins, celebrate progress, and consolidate gains into a process improvement plan for healthcare change.
Understand the freeze and refreeze stages in healthcare change initiatives, anchor new practices in culture through success stories and metrics, and address barriers across the project lifecycle.
Address planning barriers in healthcare change by countering groupthink with a culture of trust, clarifying the change process via a process map, and preventing productivity dips through transparent education.
Examine initiation barriers in healthcare change management, including planning fallacy, optimism bias, anchoring, and undefined scope. Use reflective thinking and a project charter to clarify scope and guide stakeholder action.
In the execution phase, address resistance with clear, consistent top-down communication and guardrails, and emphasize what's in it for me to gain adoption; provide ongoing reinforcement and support.
Navigate the monitor and control phase by addressing the expectation gap and ending too soon, using the ooda loop to detect delays and reinforce refreezing through ongoing education.
Ensure a durable closeout by smoothing the handoff to operations, documenting lessons learned, and embedding checklists, new hire training, and help desk and vendor contacts to sustain program success.
Identify risks and apply change management tools early by reviewing the transtheoretical model of change, two theories of change management, and the project life cycle to address barriers.
This course is designed for healthcare project managers (PMs) or clinical project leads with limited formal background in change management fundamentals. Throughout the course modules, you will receive an introduction to how people navigate change and an introduction to the change management process by reviewing some popular theories and models of change. We will also cover an overview of the life cycle of a project. Finally we’ll combine both change management principles and the project life cycle by reviewing some common barriers to change in healthcare projects throughout each stage of the project life cycle and allow time to apply the change management principles you just learned to each.
As a physical therapist, I was tasked with managing projects that required behavioral change, but I had no formal knowledge of change management theories, models, or tools to help manage that process. If a goal of our projects is to improve adoption of a new organization initiative, especially ones that involve workflow changes or practice changes, change management is an integral piece to ensuring that our projects are a success!
The goal of this course is to provide you with lessons learned, 'what I wish I had knowns', and basic tools to set you up for successfully implementing change at your organizations!
Let the journey begin!
CONTINUING EDUCATION NOTES:
PMP(R) Certificate Holders: This course content is appropriate to be self-logged for 0.5 PDU in Power Skills under the Education category. Nothing will be automatically added to your Dashboard after taking this course. You will have to manually log into your PMI(R) account and self-enter the PDUs in your Dashboard. Please message me with any questions on how to log your PDUs.
Physical Therapists/PTAs: For the year 2026 - This course is approved for 1 continuing education credit by the West Virginia Board of Physical Therapy (WVBOPT) for physical therapists and physical therapy assistants in the United States. Please message me for details on obtaining the appropriate course certificate if this applies to you. (Note: Credit can only be awarded to each participant one time, as it is the same course being presented in multiple packages. Message me with any questions. Participants licensed in other states are responsible for checking if their state of licensure will accept the WVBOPT approval) Thank you!