Essay Example: Situational Analysis in the Emergency Care Unit

The situation analysis will serve as the beginning of a critical review of the hospital setting, the internal and external working condition of the hospital that will further help understand the hospital's capabilities, environment, and patients. It will involve a mythological evaluation and collection of present and previous social, political, and economic data with the aim of assessing the hospital's opportunities, threats, weaknesses, and strength. It will thus focus on the conditions of the hospital, trends, and forces with the possibility of influencing the overall performance of the hospital and the utilization of appropriate strategies. The hospital is looking forward to improving its operations, adding value to its emergency care services that include ultrasound, laboratory services, CT-scan, X-ray, and care within the Emergency Care Unit. The unit aims at improving its rapid response to emergencies, medical resources, and personalized care. Over the years, the hospital facility has relied on an old system of round-the-clock emergency response that focused on the availability of nurses and doctors whenever needed and services nearer to the patients. In its mission statement, the emergency unit treated both adults and children in a family friendly setting suited for recuperation and therapeutic healing. Due to its unique nature of attending to patients who come without an appointment, the hospital endeavors improve on the department's unique services that cover a whole range of life-threatening conditions from accidents, acute illnesses, and home and outdoor injuries that require immediate action and attendance.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Steps for undergoing Situational Analysis

The situation analysis will involve a small team of experts drawn from the hospital staff, research staff members, a communication team member, and two or three members of the hospital management. All through the satiation analysis, the team will regularly liaise with various stakeholders who may include policy makers in the hospital, potential beneficiaries, partners, and opinion leaders drawn from relevant departments and professions within the health sector as put forth by Gunnarsson and Stomberg (2009).

As part of the inquiry phase, the situation analysis will be carried out at the start of the entire project before developing the implementation plan.

Steps 1: Identification of the Health Issue

Identification of the health problem involves recognizing the particular matter at hand within the hospital setting that needs attention. In identifying the emergency care unit as the area for situational analysis, it was important to access the hospital priority areas, services provision trend and the impact of the service to the patients.

Step 2: Developing a Problem Report

To pay attention to a particular issue during the situational analysis, it is important to focus on a given concern or problem at a time. The problem statement will be:

Maters Health Facility Emergency Care Unit lags behind in offering up to date medication and service to its patients Coming up with the problem statement involved all the team members undertaking the situational analysis.

Step 3: Drafting a Common Vision

The vision will serve as the intended picture of what the situation will look like in the emergency care unit at the end of the exercise. The vision will be ambitious, motivating, and inspiring. Additionally, to help include all details within the scope of the team, a bigger picture of the purpose of the analysis will be drawn up. It is intended to guide the team in all aspects of the exercise on an issue such as data collection, analysis of the data, and translation of the entire picture.

The vision of the project will be

The hospital seeks to update its services and care at the emergency unit through and by updating its tools of treatment, service, response, and its professional approach to handling emergency situations.

Step 4: Undertaking a Desk Review

The desk review will entail reviewing the problem statement and splitting it into different concepts. After that, it will come up with some of the keywords related to the concepts.

Step 5: Determination of the Scale of the Review

Determination of the extent of the review will entail determining how much research and comprehensive reviews to be undertaken, dates of the data, and the research to be collected. It will thus include if the entire report will be an ordinary peer review literature or gray literature.

Step 6: Identification of Relevant Information

Identification of pertinent information will use qualitative and quantitative data, which will look for information pertaining on:

The Problem

Influence and Scope

Situation at the Health Facility

Size and those affected

Capacity of the facility in handling the situation

The wide-ranging Context

Within the hospital facility

Media Access

Facilities communication and Infrastructure

The Issue Attempt

Previous, current, and ongoing efforts in addressing the issue

Step 7: Reviewing and Organization of the Data

Reviewing of information will involve using only information relevant to the analysis. Additionally, it will entail the organization of the information in a manner that will make it easy for identification of key concepts. Additional information may involve how patients feel about the problem, and what influences their conduct towards the situation.

Step 8: Analysis of the Data and a Summary of the Findings

At this stage, the team will address valid information concerning the health problem at the emergency unit. A review will be made up to help in the preparation of the report to be shared with the relevant stakeholders and the project team.

Step 9: Filling any Available Gaps

Differences within the analysis will be carried out through interview, discussions, and talks with potential audiences. Other interest groups that may play a critical role in filling up the gaps will be a religious organization/persons, social service workers, and health personnel.

Data Collection Methods

The team of experts will use Quantitative and Qualitative methods for data collection.

Quantitative data collection process: Through and by this approach, data collection will be sampled randomly in addition to structured data collection tools. The method produces easy to understand data, are easy to compare and generalize. Typical quantitative methods to be used include, Observation of critical events at the unit, interviews, administering surveys, clinical trials, and experiments.

Qualitative Data Collection: The method provides information essential to understanding a given process(s) Qualitative data collection method rely on numerous methods that help in authenticating the results and relies mostly on interactive interviews, open-ended and less structured procedures. The most commonly used categories of qualitative methods include in-depth discussion, document review, and observation methods.

External Environmental Analysis

These include factors beyond the hospital's control or change (van et al., 2012). They include the competitors who form an essential component of the hospital analysis team to learn from and make recommendations. The owners or shareholders of the hospital also constitute external factors. They may include government agencies, company, the right owner or one who has equity in the hospital. Client form a critical component of the external factors of the hospital. During analysis, the clients may be separated on demographic grounds, socioeconomic factors, and political affiliations. The providers also constitute an important external factor during analysis as they play a considerable part in the type of service offered by the facility.

The above factors entail the business elements that give a clear picture of the environment the hospital operates. Other complimentary analysis factors that are drawn from the external environmental factors include competition, entry barriers, the threat of alternative health services or facilities, client's bargaining ability, and entry barriers for other health care facilities. The above factors represent dynamics that may play a significant part in the operations and running of the medical facility and more so, the emergency unit.

Elements of Internal Environment

Through and by use of the value-based health care delivery system, elements of the internal environment will be analyzed.

Strengths

The emergency unit of Mater's Health Facility Emergency Care Unit boasts of the ability to treat and care for over 100,000 patients per annum. The conditions range from stroke, heart attack, trauma, accident injuries, and a wide variety of health complications. While analyzing the strengths of the unit, the above factors form the core center of the premises. The rpower of the emergency unit focuses on the advantages of the facility, including the availability of new or state of the art equipment in addition to trained personnel.

Weaknesses

Weakness represents anything within the emergency unit that is sub-par as concerns a room of urgency. These may include lack of state of the art equipment (as is the case with Mater's Health Facility Emergency Care Unit), poorly trained support staff, and lack of treatment equipment.

Use of Organizational Values Chain

The use of corporate value chain aims at changing the health facilities inputs into a beneficial output that brings better value as compared to the original costs of producing the outputs. It will help address the financial logic of the hospital's operations. Porter (2009), maintains that by creating more value, a health facility can turn into greater profit and successful management regarding patient treatment and care. For example, Mater Health Facility will acquire state of the art diagnostic equipment that will help in the diagnosis of complex illnesses such as cancer diagnosis.

The health facility, organizations value chain will entail a set of activities aimed at improving health care and treatment value to its clients.

Discussion of Strengths/Weaknesses as Identified

By use of the power analysis tool, the hospital emergency setting will be analyzed while looking at its strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (Abdi et al., 2011).

Some of the strengths the emergency unit boost of include specialized expertise, highly dedicated staff, and a good reputation within and amongst the locals and clients.

On the other hand, weaknesses entail aspects such as lack of state of the art equipment, weak marketing and market penetration within the region and beyond, challenges in the management of the staff, and poor treatment and care of the clients.

However, Swayne (2012), argues that an emergency unit may have opportunities that include lack of a leading competitor, emerging markets, and ability to acquire new technological treatment and diagnostic equipment.

Threats faced by the hospital facility and more so the emergency unit include demographic changes, government policies, and economic slowdown that has persisted over the last couple of months.

Evaluating Competitive Relevance

An evaluation of competitive significance will aim at identifying possible competition from amongst nearly health facilities that also provide emergency services specializing in acute diseases, injuries, and accidents. An analysis will be carried out to identify health facilities providing similar emergency services with the aim of using the information to create a specific action plan in turning around the emergency unit for a continuous financial feasibility.

Service Background and Description

Considering the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities the emergency department has, it will focus on the dynamics that will position it as the best and most reliable healthcare facility in...