In my little experience I have found out that communication is key to a smooth running of any organization. I have found out that the reading in section 3.4 is very relevant to my role. Communication, either formal or informal is essential to the smooth running of an organization. It is even more important in the health care sector where the life of a patient is would be in danger if there is a breakdown in communication about the management of a patient. It is important for all procedures and care given to a patient be charted so that progress on the management of the patient can be recorded. In this way, I have discovered that the reading in section 3.4 is quite appropriate and really tallies with what obtains in reality as regards the importance of communication in the workplace.
Health care organizations have a lot of responsibilities in ensuring that the needs of the nursing staff are met.
One of the ways of ensuring this is that the organization should employ enough nursing staff so as to normalize the nurse to patient ratio (Lankshear et al, 2005). This will go a long way in improving patient care and reduce the frequency of medication errors that can arise from a nursing staff caring for an excessively large number of patients (Valentine et al, 2009).
In addition, the organization should ensure that the nursing staff are adequately remunerated for their efforts (Huber, 2006). This will serve as a form of encouragement to propel the nursing staff to renew their dedication to work even harder to improve care outcome by improving patient care (Shaffer & Tuttas, 2009).
In addition, timely promotion of nursing staff with the commensurate benefits would also serve as a form of motivation (Shaffer & Tuttas, 2009) (Lankshear et al, 2005).
Moreover, it is also the duty of the health care organization to provide an enabling environment to ensure that the workplace is as close to the ideal as possible (Harris, 2006). Provision of necessary materials and equipment to the nursing staff will ensure that they go through fewer troubles when performing their duties and thereby reduce the frustration that comes to having to do workarounds to solve problems (Shaffer & Tuttas, 2009).
In supporting nurses, presence of teams and organizational culture are important factors to be considered.
It is important to note that a team is collectively a group of people that are collectively responsible to each other to the organization at large. Having a functional team would definitely lead to increased productivity of the organization.
In addition, it is important to cultivate an organizational culture, which supports collaborative participative decision-making.
In conclusion, it is important for the organization to take make the work environment as conducive for the nurse as possible so that the care of patient is not in any way impaired. Not only would the patient benefit by having high quality care, but also the workers in the organization would have good job satisfaction. This would better motivate them to do more to improve patient care (Valentine et al, 2009).
References
Harris, M. G. (Ed.). (2006). Managing health services: Concepts and practice (2nd ed.) (chap 16). Sydney: MacLennan & Petty.
Huber, D. (2006). Budgeting. In Leadership and Nursing Care Management (3rd ed., pp. 771–788). Philadelphia: Saunders, Elsevier.
Lankshear, A. J., Sheldon, T. A., & Maynard, A. (2005, April–June). Nurse staffing and health care outcomes: A Systematic Review Of the International Research Evidence. Advances in Nursing Science, 28(2), 163–174.
Valentine, ZN., McKay, M., & Glassford, B. (2009). Getting ready for your next patient: Embedding quality into nursing practice, Nurse Leader, 9(3), 39-43
Shaffer, F., & Tuttas, C (2009). Nursing leadership’s responsibility for patient quality, safety and satisfaction: Current review and analysis.
McGillis Hall, L., & Doran, D. (2004, January–March). Nurse staffing, care delivery model and patient care quality. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 19(1), 27–33.
