HS850 Unit 7 Stroke Transitions Team Plan Example

Course	HS850 Advanced Health Leadership
Unit	Unit 7
Paper type	Team development plan
Length	About 880 words, 6 pages double-spaced
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Purdue University Global
Program	Doctor of Health Science (DHSc)
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for HS850 Unit 7

Four Services, One Patient, No Team Yet: A Unit 7 Team Development Plan for Stroke Transitions Across a Health System

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

HS850: Advanced Health Leadership

Unit 7 Team Development Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The health system, its services and its figures are composite and shown as placeholders; the research cited is real.

What this part is doingDescribing the patient's path before the team shows that the team exists to serve a handoff problem, not to add a meeting.

The Problem the Team Must Solve

In the last year, [41] percent of stroke survivors discharged from the acute unit had a primary care visit within fourteen days, and at [63] percent of those visits the discharge summary was not yet in the clinic's record. Rehabilitation and home health staff report learning about swallowing precautions and anticoagulation plans from family members. These failures are not unique to this system. Across the studies pooled in one systematic review, the hospital's summary had reached the outpatient physician by the first follow-up appointment in no more than about a third of cases, and when it did arrive it frequently omitted test results, treatment details and the plan for follow-up (Kripalani et al., 2007).

No one is negligent. Each service does its own work well. The problem lies in the handoffs, which belong to no team.

Why a Team, and What Kind

The four services cannot be merged into one department, and their staff change shift by shift. What is needed is not a permanent team in the traditional sense but what Edmondson (2012) calls teaming: people from different groups coordinating on the fly around a shared patient, held together by a shared purpose and practices rather than a fixed roster. The plan therefore builds a small core team that designs and maintains the handoff and a wider set of people who team around each patient.

Core team: a stroke nurse navigator from the acute unit (team lead), a physical therapist from inpatient rehabilitation, a home health nurse case manager, a primary care nurse from the clinic network and a hospitalist who cares for stroke patients. A patient and family advisor joins quarterly reviews.

Stage One, Months One to Two: Forming Around a Shared Picture

The team's first task is to map one patient's path in detail, from the stroke unit to the first primary care visit, using two recent cases chosen by the team. Each member describes what their service needs to know and when. The map becomes the team's shared picture of the problem.

Psychological safety is built deliberately here. Studying work teams in a manufacturing company, Edmondson (1999) found that how secure members felt raising doubts with one another predicted how much teams learned, through questions, requests for feedback and open talk about mistakes, and that this learning predicted how well they performed. In a team that crosses professions and hierarchies, the primary care nurse and the home health case manager may hesitate to point out problems in the acute unit's discharge practice. The team lead will open each meeting by asking for one thing that went wrong in a recent transition and will thank the person who raises it, regardless of whose service it implicates.

The team will fail if the people who receive the patient cannot say plainly what the people who sent the patient left out.

What this part is doingTying a specific meeting habit to the research on psychological safety turns a general principle into something the team lead can do on the first day.

Stage Two, Months Three to Five: Working Across Boundaries

The core team will spend as much effort outside the team as inside it. Ancona and Caldwell (1992) found that teams' external activity shaped their performance: teams that engaged in ambassador activity, protecting the team and persuading leaders, and task coordination with other groups performed better over time than teams that focused mostly inward or that only scanned their environment. For this team, ambassador work means the navigator reporting monthly to the stroke program director and the primary care medical director, and coordination work means each member carrying the team's handoff design back to their own service and bringing back objections.

Deliverables: a one-page transition summary designed with all four services, sent electronically within 24 hours of discharge; a warm handoff call between the stroke navigator and the receiving service for patients with swallowing, anticoagulation or caregiver concerns; and a shared list of patients in transition reviewed weekly by the core team.

Stage Three, Months Six to Nine: Learning From Each Transition

The team will review every transition in which the summary arrived late or a key item was missed, using a short format: what happened, what each service knew and when, and what will change. Reviews will be blame-free and brief.

Measures

1. Percentage of primary care visits within fourteen days at which the transition summary is in the record. Target: [90] percent by month nine.

2. Percentage of patients with a primary care visit within fourteen days. Target: [60] percent.

3. Team climate: a brief psychological safety survey of core team members at months two, five and nine.

4. Receiving staff reports of missing information, collected monthly.

What this part is doingMeasuring team climate alongside patient outcomes reflects the plan's claim that the team's learning behavior drives the results.

Risks

The core team members carry full workloads, and meetings will be the first thing dropped. The plan protects one hour every two weeks, agreed with each member's manager. If the primary care nurse cannot attend, the team will meet without the service that most often receives patients without information, so the primary care medical director will be asked to backfill her clinic time.

References

Ancona, D. G., & Caldwell, D. F. (1992). Bridging the boundary: External activity and performance in organizational teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37(4), 634-665. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393475

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Edmondson, A. C. (2012). Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate, and compete in the knowledge economy. Jossey-Bass.

Kripalani, S., LeFevre, F., Phillips, C. O., Williams, M. V., Basaviah, P., & Baker, D. W. (2007). Deficits in communication and information transfer between hospital-based and primary care physicians: Implications for patient safety and continuity of care. JAMA, 297(8), 831-841. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.297.8.831

What the HS850 Unit 7 assignment asks for

The seventh unit typically asks learners to plan the development of a team in their organization, usually five to seven pages. The plan should explain the problem the team will address, define its membership and roles and lay out stages of development with activities and deliverables. Instructors expect learners to draw on team research rather than only a stage model such as Tuckman's. Measures of both team process and results are commonly required. Many prompts ask learners to address risks, such as competing workloads, and to name the managers whose agreement is needed. Plans for teams that cross departments should explain how members will coordinate with the groups they come from.

How this HS850 Unit 7 example is built

The plan opens with local transition data and published evidence on missing discharge information, then explains why a teaming approach suits staff who change shift by shift. A core team of five plus a quarterly patient advisor is named. Stage one maps one patient's path and builds psychological safety with a meeting habit; the highlighted sentence explains why receivers must be able to name what senders left out. Stage two applies boundary research and lists three deliverables, including a one-page summary within 24 hours. Stage three sets blame-free reviews. Four numbered measures pair outcomes with team climate, and risks address protected meeting time.

HS850 Unit 7 rubric: what earns full points

Rubrics for team development plans typically look first at whether the team's purpose is clear, then at grounding in team research, the practicality of stages and activities, measurement and attention to risks. Purpose earns points when it is tied to a specific, documented problem. Grounding rewards plans that apply research on how teams learn and coordinate, not only stage models. Practicality is judged by whether activities, owners and timelines are realistic for busy clinicians. Measurement credit goes to plans that track both team process and patient or service results. Risk sections score well when they identify the most likely failure and a response. Clear structure, numbered measures and APA style complete the grade. Plans that schedule protected time and name who releases it tend to be judged more feasible.

HS850 Unit 7 help from the desk

A frequent weakness is a plan built entirely on forming, storming, norming and performing, which describes stages without telling a leader what to do. Another is a team whose purpose is general improvement rather than a specific problem. Some learners list members without explaining how they will coordinate with their home departments. Others measure only outcomes and miss whether the team itself is learning. Ignoring workload makes a plan unrealistic. If your team addresses a different transition or service line, perhaps heart failure or behavioral health, send your setting and the problem, and a plan can be drafted with stages, owners and measures. Forgetting to include the receiving service, usually primary care, leaves the team blind to the problems it exists to fix.

Get an HS850 Unit 7 example written to your instructions

Name the services the team must span and the patients or process it would serve, and note who manages each service, by role only. With those, send the Unit 7 prompt and its rubric. The finished plan covers membership, launch, boundary roles and measures, within 24-48h. There is no charge for your first request. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.

More HS850 papers and DHSc samples

HS850 Unit 7 questions, answered

What if I do not have authority to form a team?

Most writers do not, and the plan should say so. Describe the team as a proposal, name the managers whose agreement it needs, and treat securing their release of staff time as the first phase. A plan acknowledging that negotiation reads as more realistic than one assuming the author can assign people from other services, which few doctoral writers could actually do.

Is Tuckman's model appropriate for this unit?

It can appear, but on its own it describes stages rather than telling a leader what to do, and much of its evidence comes from small groups outside health care. Plans drawing on research about how clinical teams learn, such as work on teaming or team launch, tend to give the analysis more to work with. Where the prompt names a model, use it and add one other source.

Where can I find a free HS850 Unit 7 sample paper?

This page contains the full Unit 7 team development plan for a stroke transitions team spanning acute care, rehabilitation, home health and primary care.

What is teaming?

Edmondson's term for coordinating across groups around shared work without a fixed roster, which suits stroke transitions where staff change by shift and service.

How long should a cross-service team plan run?

Long enough to form, work and learn, often six to twelve months. The sample runs nine months in three stages, with measures at months two, five and nine.