Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Competing needs arise within any organization as employees seek to meet their targets and leaders seek to meet company goals. As a leader, successful management of these goals requires establishing priorities and allocating resources accordingly.
Within a healthcare setting, the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients are often in conflict. Mandatory overtime, implementation of staffing ratios, use of unlicensed assisting personnel, and employer reductions of education benefits are examples of practices that might lead to conflicting needs in practice.
Leaders can contribute to both the problem and the solution through policies, action, and inaction. In this Assignment, you will further develop the white paper you began work on in Module 1 by addressing competing needs within your organization.
To Prepare:
- Review the national healthcare issue/stressor you examined in your Assignment for Module 1, and review the analysis of the healthcare issue/stressor you selected.
- Identify and review two evidence-based scholarly resources that focus on proposed policies/practices to apply to your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Reflect on the feedback you received from your colleagues on your Discussion post regarding competing needs.
The Assignment (1–2 pages):
Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Add a section to the 2–3 page paper you submitted in Module 1. The new section should address the following in 1–2 pages:
- Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
- Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
- Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
- Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.
- Due to the nature of this assignment, your instructor may require more than 7 days to provide you with quality feedback.
Expert Answer and Explanation
Developing organizational Policies and Practices
The United States’ healthcare industry is facing a decline in supply of nurses, and this issue can worsen if conflicting needs arise in the organization. In an organizational setting, leaders have interests, and these interests may conflict those of the employees. The clash of these interests may negate the advancement of the organization’s goals considering that it can exacerbate the impact of the issues which plague the healthcare industry. In the United States (U.S.), the inadequate availability of the nurses is growing into a problem considering that it contributes to the high rates of occurrence of adverse of clinical events.
For instance, it can cause the surge in the cases of patient falls as well as rise in the rates of nosocomial infections (Maresova et al., 2020). Thus, a hospital should pay attention to the existing competing needs, and adopt effective interventions to limit the impact of these conflicting needs on the nurse shortage as this study explores.
The Competing Needs
Nursing professionals grapple with various conflicting needs, and the impact of these needs can be worse for nurses in under-staffed hospitals. A nurse may want to optimize the treatment outcomes by delivering patient-focused, and quality-based intervention. As they pursue this interest, they may have to deal with the issue of the burnout. This is because putting too much efforts into work can be exhausting, and it can cause stress (Maresova et al., 2020). Also, a nurse may want to adopt Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) when the management feels that the adoption of the EBP may cause the wastage of the resources.
Each of the competing needs affects the issue pertaining to the shortage of nurses. When a nurse is unable to deliver care as they should because of the concern associated with burnout, this may leave hospitals with a gap in nursing care, and cause the surge in the needs for clinical services. Accordingly, this may worsen the problem of the shortage of the clinicians by contributing to the increase in the demand for the medical services. The use of the EBP is associated with benefits such as reduced rates of re-hospitalization.
It can additionally improve the safety of the clinical interventions, and help improve the quality of care. The lack of adoption of the EBP can have the opposite effect. For example, it can negatively affect the quality of care, and this can in turn contribute to the demand for nursing services (Halter et al., 2017). For this reason, this conflicting interest equally has a potential of affecting the concerns linked to the under-supply of nurses.
The Practice which may affect the Stressor
Hospitals have practices which may affect the nurse shortage as a stressor. The hospital which I am aware of, for instance, has a history of not utilizing the informatics to guide the delivery of the care. Currently, the hospital relies on the paperwork, and it does not want to invest in the portal technology. Because the hospital is reluctant when it comes to adopting this particular technology, the hospital’s clinical staff face the risk of making medical errors.
When a clinician makes a medical mistake due to misreading of the clinical instructions, the patient may face the risk of injury or harm. An example is a scenario in which a nurse misses a diagnosis information, and they administer higher drug dosage, causing complications which may require nursing intervention (Fagerström, Kinnunen, & Saarela, 2018).
The practice in which the hospital is struck on the paperwork can affect the nurse shortage in undesirable manner. It can contribute to the rise in the number of cases of adverse clinical events such as nosocomial infections. Other effects include the increase in the number of days which patients spend in hospitals, and the surge in the number of falls. Falls can cause injuries which may require clinical intervention. Therefore, the laxity in adopting informatics may continue affecting the shortage of the nurse in a negative manner.
Critique of the Policy
The traditional paperwork offers various advantages when used for the purpose of storage of information. For instance, one does not need power to access the information stored in the file system. However, the use of the paperwork is associated with various flaws. It can be difficult for a hospital to store the information if it lacks ample space to store the documents. The mobility or portability of the information, still, is an issue of concern. In a digitized world where devices have to exchange information, the documentation using paperwork is becoming obsolete.
It also consumes a lot of time. Besides, editing the details is cumbersome, and it may take someone hours or even days to make changes to the document. Even if they manage to make the changes, making changes to the document may make it messy. It can further limit the coordination of considering that transferring information physically can be tedious (Griffiths et al., 2018).
Thus, a practice in which the hospital uses paperwork can make the work of nurses much more difficult, and cause frustrations if nurses are fewer in number. The patients may be at risk of developing injuries or experiencing adverse events because of the poor care. It may consequently result to the breach of the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence.
The Recommendation of the Policy Changes
If an organization fails to address the issues concerning the lack of adoption of the technology, it may lag behind in terms of delivering quality care. This warrants the need for a hospital experiencing the issues linked to the use of the paperwork, to undertake measures focused on addressing policy or practice issues. The hospital should allocate funds to go into purchasing and installing new portal technology.
It should include in the policy the details such as the procedure for assessing compliance, and conducting training with focus on equipping workers with skills needed to use the informatics technology. The hospital may also ban the use of the papers for the purpose of recording pertinent clinical data. This is important in ensuring that each department goes digital, and use the new technology to coordinate care, and optimize care outcomes (Griffiths et al., 2018).
Conclusion
In conclusion, certain practices in an organization may negatively affect hospital’s operations, and some of these practices such as the use of obsolete methods of storing information can worsen the implications of short supply of nursing professionals. The conflicting interests can equally exacerbate the issue.
Working with patients with focus on improving their wellbeing while having to deal with the issue of the burnout is an example of these kinds of interests. Therefore, it is imperative that hospitals make changes to their policy by prioritizing on the use of technology to inform clinical decisions. This can help prevent the serious health events associated with the inadequate availability of the nurses.
References
Fagerström, L., Kinnunen, M., & Saarela, J. (2018). Nursing workload, patient safety incidents and mortality: an observational study from Finland. BMJ open, 8(4), e016367. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016367.
Griffiths, P., Recio-Saucedo, A., Dall’Ora, C., Briggs, J., Maruotti, A., Meredith, P., Smith, G. B., Ball, J., & Missed Care Study Group (2018). The association between nurse staffing and omissions in nursing care: A systematic review. Journal of advanced nursing, 74(7), 1474–1487.Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.13564.
Halter, M., Pelone, F., Boiko, O., Beighton, C., Harris, R., Gale, J., Gourlay, S., & Drennan, V. (2017). Interventions to Reduce Adult Nursing Turnover: A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews. The open nursing journal, 11, 108–123.Doi: https://doi.org/10.2174/1874434601711010108.
Maresova, P., Prochazka, M., Barakovic, S., Baraković Husić, J., & Kuca, K. (2020). A Shortage in the Number of Nurses-A Case Study from a Selected Region in the Czech Republic and International Context. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 8(2), 152. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8020152.
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