Research Paper on Poor Working Conditions at Evaluation Facility: Assessment Results

Introduction

The workplace chosen for evaluation scored poorly on the assessment. The working conditions are not conducive for nurses, and staffs are overworked. Using the Clark Healthy Workplace inventory, the facility scored fifty-three. Although it did fairly for some sectors, most of them were below average. Employee morale and satisfaction was lowest, while the availability of resources for professional growth was highest. These results are an illustration of resources that are unexploited due to poor planning. The workplace has resources but is understaffed. Instead of investing in human power, management has invested in machines. There are enough resources for medical practitioners to develop their skills, but the workload they have does not allow enough time to familiarize with equipment and opportunities. The low civility at the workplace is also an indication of an underlying cause that needs to be resolved. Organizational culture, values, and beliefs determine what employees term as usual, right or wrong, thus dealing with these stems out incivility in the workplace. Instilling an organizational culture of excellent customer care and good communication skills would eliminate civility in the workplace.

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

Save 25%

Two of the most surprising factors is the availability of resources and the high levels of incivility. It is a rare occurrence to find a hospital with enough resources for practitioners. Most health facilities are deficient of resources to support growth and nurturing of skills adequately. Despite the workplace, it was a shock that there were so high levels of incivility among nurses. Nurses are rude and not ready to take the patient's questions. The rudeness is mostly expressed in the triage when taking a patient history. In the end, nurses may end up overlooking some details, which could lead to more mistakes during medical procedures. History taking collects information that is essential in drug administration. It also provides information on drug allergies, family history, and genetic variation and how they affect metabolism.

The assessment confirmed that most workers are overworked, just as speculated. Before carrying out the assessment, it prospected that due to the high number of patients being served by the facility, caregivers are less than the set limit. The US is currently facing a shortage of medical practitioners; thus it was expected that nurses serve more than the expected number of patients. The shortage is set to increase over the years, which means more students need to join nursing schools. Nurses serve an average of eight patients, which frequently cause burnout. The rudeness of nurses is sometimes caused by bitterness due to working for long hours.

Literature Review

Incivility in healthcare is becoming more rampant in the industry, which could be attributed to increased pressure to deliver more in the workplace. The practice is a worrying trend. Clark, Olender, and Kenski (2011) advocated for nurse leadership as a solution to incivility. The nurse-leaders perspective argues that instilling leadership skills in every nurse makes them responsible. The article examines how education can be used to deal with civility. Civility brings along extra costs, decreased patient care and satisfaction, and reduces the chances of recovery for patients. The Nurse Leadership perspective thus aims at improving healthcare by eliminating such mistakes that can be avoided. In the articles, the authors carry out a study to evaluate the efficiency and applicability of the concept. Dividing nurse leadership into three: expectations of leaders, the challenges of being a nurse leader and the optimistic outlook of a nurse leadership perspective, the article evaluates the merits and limitations of the approach as a solution to low civility levels in workplaces.

In this particular case, adopting the nurse leader perspective is crucial since the workplace is understaffed. The nurse in charge has more useful work to do other than follow up on junior nurses who did not complete their tasks or did them haphazardly. Instilling a sense of responsibility in each employee is essential in such scenarios. The nurses can independently carry out their roles without the nurse in charge of worrying about the type of care patients are receiving. A nurse leadership perspective also improves customer relations and increases success stories for the organization.

Clark (2019) also suggested combining cognitive rehearsal, simulation, and evidence-based scripting to address incivility. Incivility is deep-rooted in the workplace, depending on the existing organizational culture. Culture is instilled at three levels: the written and clear rules. These are unwritten rules that can be compromised, the subconscious acts that are overlooked or ignored. Most unethical practices subconsciously enter the workplace. At first doing something very unacceptable in the workplace, then it becomes less of a concern, and finally part of the organization's way of life. For instance, ignoring patients who ask too many questions becomes part of an organization's culture unknowingly. At first, the nurses just feel overwhelmed, which subconsciously registers in the minds that such patients could not be answered. In the end, they answer such patients back because the patient is not supposed to ask too many questions.

Rehearsal, simulation, and evidence-based scripting deal with the wrong culture in the workplace. They not only seek to correct how patients see the organization, but how nurse perceives the customers. Altering the cause alters the outcome. Changing the nurses' attitude eliminates incivility in the workplace. This approach suggested by Clark is a wholesome approach that can also be applied in other settings. All the steps of the process are infused through the brain, which controls the rest of the body. Changing reasoning transforms the whole workplace by replacing former attitudes with the new ones.

Strategies to Create High-Performance Inter-professional Teams

Healthcare is now geometric, meaning that professionals from different departments are involved in medical procedures for the same patient, especially with the establishment of the Affordable Care Act. Bringing together professionals from different fields requires proper coordination for them to be productive. In a team of experts, the need to excel might likely override the reason for coming together, thus laying clear strategies on how to run such a team is essential. The following strategies can be applied to increase the performance of inter-professional teams (Fay, 2016). Setting clear goals that every professional can achieve without straining. Every team member wants to feel comfortable working in the team; thus if the team is a burden, they are likely to quit or not give the best.

• It involves all professionals in the decision-making process. This creates a sense of ownership of the project, which makes the individuals more ready to contribute to its success.
• Clear identification of roles and responsibilities to avoid overlapping of functions or assumptions that a particular task belongs to another party (Clark, Olender, Cardoni, and Kenski, 2011).
• Good, precise and timely communication before and after decision making
• Decision making is based on expert advice. All professionals in the team have expert opinions; thus decisions must be based on their insights
• Creating trust among members is essential. A team that does not trust the abilities and dealings of any of the parties cannot operate confidently.
• Embracing cultural, personality and professional diversity in the team
• Effective conflict management. In every group, misunderstandings will occur and are a significant cause of splits. Creating solutions for various disputes even before they come up is crucial to avoid unnecessary tension in the future (Clark, 2019).
• Willingness to learn. With a team of experts, every individual has an area they specialize in. However, that should not hinder them from learning through the others. Keeping an open mind is essential when in a team of diverse professionals.

Conclusion

Assessing a workplace brings out the shortcomings, challenges, and chances of growth within the organization. In healthcare set up, incivility has been proven to be one of the major problems, which leads to poor communication, and generally weakens the nurse-patient relationship. There is, therefore, need to find a quick solution to incivility in the healthcare sector. Among the proposed approaches are nurse leadership perspective and simulation and rehearsal solutions. The suggestions aim at not only changing the communication between nurses and patients but within the whole hospital set up. To take care of a fast-changing and diverse healthcare sector, especially with the establishment of the Affordable Care Act, the number of patients is set to increase, which means practitioners must prepare by creating inter-professional teams. Inter-professional teams make operations more manageable, but should be well structured for them to be effective.

References

Clark, C.M. (2019). Combining cognitive rehearsal, simulation, and evidence-based scripting to address incivility. Nurse Educator, 44(2), 64-68.

Clark, C.M., Olender, L., Cardoni, C., & Kenski, D. (2011). Fostering civility in nursing education and practice nurse leader perspectives. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 41(7/8), 324-33.

Fay, D., Borrill, C., Amir, Z., Haward, R., & West, M. A. (2016). Getting the most out of multidisciplinary teams: A multisample study of team innovation in health care. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79(4), 553-567.