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DIMENSIONS HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS
Organization Overview
Dimensions Health Care commonly referred to as DHS dates back to 1982 when it was formed. It is an integrated not-for-profit healthcare system that serves Prince George’s County’s residents and the surrounding regions. The members under this system are Laurel Regional Hospital, Glenridge Medical Center, Bowie Health Campus and Prince George’s Hospital Center. Being the largest not-for-profit healthcare provider in the region, DHS provides quality and comprehensive healthcare services that range from rehabilitative services, behavioral health, prenatal care and much more.
DHS is committed to provision of personal and an entire family’s quality healthcare in meeting their needs effectively. The mission of the organization is entire restoration and improvement of health status in the community. The goal is availing and providing efficient and advanced health care services to the county residents. As indicated above, the organization strives to achieve the mission and the goal through acute care hospitals, a 24-hour stand alone emergency room, an outpatient surgery center and the Dimensions Surgery Center. Additionally there are two ambulatory care centers. With this structure in place, the institutions strive to work together and are primarily dedicated to acquiring and delivering the highest possible standards of patient care.
I operate as a nursing director in the medical and surgery department in Prince George’s Hospital. The mandate is to ensure that the nurses are organized and planned in such a way that they co-ordinate with physicians, surgeons and the entire staff in delivering quality and safe procedures in surgery. Some of the surgical and medical services include open-heart surgery, therapeutic catheterization, cardiac care, critical care and trauma. Considering this critical services that hold a human life on a thread, it is critical that the entire medical staff unites in giving their best.
Problem Statement
At Dimensions Healthcare Services, the primary goal is to provide quality health care whish goes further to improving, maintaining and promoting human life. With such considerations therefore, achievement and success in this organization strives to consider the positive outcomes of a patient and the patient experience. This therefore calls for optimal control, planning, staffing and coordination of the staff to ensure that the positive results are recorded.
In the healthcare sector, teamwork and cohesiveness comes in handy. It ensures that there are no loose ends left when it comes to preserving and improving human health. When physicians, surgeons, nurses and the janitors fail at working together towards this common goal, negative health impacts can come along. Considering how broad Dimensions Healthcare Services are, it is critical to note that there is need for utmost team work and cohesiveness. The organization has been performing well but there is still the gap to get to the best level. With this consideration, how then can the teamwork and cohesiveness be improved at Dimensions Healthcare Systems so as to improve the safe patient outcomes and a positive patient experience? Teamwork and cohesiveness have proven over time to boost the achievements of an organization’s mission, goals and objectives. This research considers how the two will impact Dimensions Healthcare Systems.
There is need that DHS steps up to improve teamwork. The improvement should be long term and large scale as well. It happens at time that some nurses have little or basically no information about their other staff members. In some instances, an operation has been conducted where the surgeon barely knows any nurse or the vice-versa. Unity, collaboration, cohesiveness and interactions are still on the lower side of the performance curve at Dimensions Healthcare Systems.
Literature Analysis
Teams target to generate special energies. It is developed when team members combine efforts to fuse together personal skills, energies, capabilities and talents in delivering tangible performance results (Bendaly, 1997). From teamwork, benefits that come along include amongst others generating a diversity of ideas, creation of involvement and participation, better decisions being made, the feeling of being special for taking part in credible work, reinforcement of individual capabilities and distribution of workload. With all this, it is hereby evident that teamwork comes in handy in problem solving where when multiple minds work on a solution. Teamwork further works as the backbone of effective and efficient communication in any given organization. Teamwork supports the improvement of cohesiveness in that chemistry and trust amongst individuals is increased. When employees work as a team, employees learn from each other (Walshe and Smith, 2011).
When staff members develop to becoming members of a cohesive group, they share team loyalty and values. With familiarity growing between the members, it becomes a smoother team which also boasts of more effective communication. They members work towards a common goal and they start employing appreciation and tabling of individual and varying points of view and skills to the project on the table (Chevalier, 2007). The group members step to the occasion to fill in when there is lack of knowledge and/or there is skill shortage. Cohesiveness in an organization supplements teamwork. Individuals get opportunities to contribute and they are empowered in the process. Managerial realization of such possibilities and support of cohesiveness results to quality improvement of either product or service.
Just like Rome, high performance teams are not sprouted in a day. They are nurtured, exercised and grown. It demands for essential skills and hard work to blend individuals with differing personalities, agendas and capabilities into one cohesive unit that has the will and desire to work towards a common goal. In a team, there is visionary and s strong team leader who does not seek to control but to encourage, organize and teach the members. In attaining a team in an organization, it begins with an understanding on the existing benefits of the team. This is then followed by ensuring that members understand and feel that they are important so as the goal can be achieved. From here the team members can be encouraged to make suggestions without fear of being criticized (Mcdonald, 1994). It includes supporting them in their attempts to make inputs. To further strengthen this, the management should support and organize team meetings and activities such as games and outings (Buelens, 2006). The team leader should always be keen with the team members and should step up to reward team members when they engage in an activity that takes the team closer to achieving their goals. Responsibilities should be delegated further to the team members to demonstrate trust and also boost their confidence and morale towards a given goal.
Cohesiveness and team work in organization can be improved through starting with assessment to determine key challenges affecting productivity and optimal communication in an organization (Buelens, 2011). After such an assessment, units or departments that require enhancement are identified and action can begin from there. Organizational action plans should be taken from here which is inclusive of training on the need for teamwork. From here, the culture can be changed through establishing teams in the organization with this primary goal.
Analysis
The weakened teamwork in Dimensions Healthcare seems to hinder the achievement of optimal patient satisfaction. This therefore goes further to undermine the quality that the patients receive. When a cold environment exists between staff in an organization, the patients are bound to notice. Their experience for them will thus not be as satisfying as they would have expected in such a recognized and recommended health facility.
Considering the nature of organization that Dimensions Healthcare Services is, we can detect that it deals with health and it is thus very broad. The result is that, the employees come from different walks, careers, cultures, professions and even different parts of the world. For example, there are doctors and nurses who come all away from as far as South Africa. There are drivers, pilots, nurses, physicians, medical specialists, engineers, accountants, lawyers, advertisers and customer care service agents. The upbringing, origins, cultures, believes and educations are all varying dimensions. This entire people have varying skills, points of views, perceptions and personal goals. Personally, my analysis predicts that the weak relationship between personnel at Dimensions Healthcare Service erupts from here.
Though at times groups are seen working together in the facility familiarity is not evident. The individuals work together in attempts to accomplish their tasks and duties assigned which automatically grants them the right to claim their wages at the end of the month. The issue here is that, while there is need that the employees work hard in attempts to achieve personal goals and objectives, the cohesiveness that brings out better communication and combined efforts has not been cultivated for enough as it should be. The management can be praised for the limitless efforts that they have put in their attempts to keep Dimensions Healthcare Systems running. The quality of healthcare provided and the finances in the organization have been kept running in an admirable manner. The same management has however left a loose end in which case teamwork has not been employed and applied as it should. Economists, business professionals and management educators share the view that the most valuable and important resource in any organization is the human labor. Therefore human resource in the organization has not been recognized as it should be by the management. The patients are the buyers of the health service and products that Dimensions Healthcare Services provides. The organization is right to consider and ensure that it satisfies the patients. However, the providers of these services and those that determine the quality of care are the employees in the organization. Therefore, the management ought to give some thought to improving morale and communication in the organization which can only be achieved through improving cohesiveness and teamwork. With this, assured safety of the patients will be improved as well as the patients will boast of better experiences upon living the hospital. This will result from the employees improved understanding, adoption and implementation of their duties with motivation and working with the values availed by Dimensions Healthcare Services.
The weakened cohesiveness and teamwork results to a condition in the healthcare facility in which the individual productivity is optimal. While the medical and non-medical staff works in the organization, they don’t give the most possible best. This harms individual and organizational objectives. The reluctance and failure to be fully committed to Dimensions Healthcare’s objectives, goals and mission extends to deteriorate patient outcome and patient experience as well. This possibly happens when a patient for instance witnesses a nurse and a surgeon having weak communication in which there is no evident smile or something of the sort. The experience that the patient will narrate to his/her friends and families will be that the staff in that Dimensions Healthcare’s was not the best. But let’s an example in which the patient undergoes an operation and before and after the operation, he notices interactive nurses and surgeons who are all smiley, supportive of each other and they can call each other’s name without a miss. The patient will develop positively through mental, physical and emotional aspects. Therefore, if teamwork and cohesiveness receives a boost at this healthcare organization, the result will be that every employee will respect, trust and establish optimal communication with the entire staff. The end result will be the attainment of the individual and organizational goals and objectives. Safe patient outcomes and positive patient experiences will be improved as a result.
Solutions
One of the solution can be to deal with the issue at departmental level in which a director of every department analysis and makes assessment on how to improve the teamwork in the department. In this, the director or manager of every department should strive to interview patients and the staff to understand the quality of patient experience and the loose ends that the personnel perceive to exist. After the analysis, the leader should then target the areas that need to be improved. This may include identifying relationships improvement between personnel or restructuring the department to ensure effective teamwork and cohesiveness. When this solution is analyzed, it is evident that teamwork will be improved at departmental regions. The advantage is that each member in each department will combine forces in making their department the best. Another advantage will be that the groups would be managed easily and that the process would be swift at team formation, training and teaching personnel on cohesiveness. But then there will be a shortcoming in the sense that, there will be unhealthy departmental competition. The teams formed will most probably dwell at achieving the departmental goals and objectives while they pay less attention to those provided by Dimensions Healthcare Systems.
However the best solution would be restore and establish teamwork in the entire organization by ensuring Dimensions Healthcare Services operates as a single block. This solution is large scale and long term. It therefore follows that this solution should be appointed and implemented to ensure teamwork and cohesiveness is evident and in place for every unit, department, individual and the entire Dimensions Healthcare Systems. When talking about a long term solution, it means that when teamwork and cohesiveness is made operational in the organization, it should be nurtured and cultivated. This will be acquired through establishing a policy that will extend to any new employee being recruited by Dimensions Healthcare regardless of the position and duties to be assigned. In this, it would start by editing, reshaping, restructuring and revisiting the organizations policy. This would ensure that the organization establishes and recognizes teamwork as one essential tool and trait in all the services that they provide. The starting point should be training and educating the entire personnel on the benefits of teamwork. It would include amongst other providing posters and meeting that educate on the same. The entire management would then embark on making every staff member to feel wanted and important in the attainment of the organization’s goals and objectives. While still on the same, the employees from all departments would be given a chance to give suggestions and make inputs on how patient services would be improved and how management should conduct their managerial roles to ensure that patients and quality of care should be prioritized further. Cohesiveness and teamwork would be strengthened further if the organization engages at organizing meetings and activities for the staff members regardless of their position to participate. An example would be holding dinners and sports that members interact and get a point to confide on each other about their experiences. The management should be keen as well to reward and recognize employees on a regular basis to encourage them further. Rewards to individuals who portray outstanding services would prove worthy. An example is rewarding a nurse who demonstrates and provides the best service to patients assigned to him or her. This will go an extra mile in improving safety and quality of care that patients receive including an experience that patients will live to remember.
Reflection
The assignment made me imagine of an organization that daily operates through combined forces to form an efficient and effective team. I have thus understood the benefits and how to establish essential teams and promoting cohesiveness. This prepares me for advocating for the same in the organization I work in. It made me revisit my managerial skills and detect my strengths and weaknesses. With this, I am bound to boost my managerial skills in my department. On academic grounds, literature review made me read further and learn more on how to establish professional relationships and how to manage an organization better. The entire research advised on the need to make changes to my personal life in which I should target to collaborate with others and give them time and chance to offer personal views, perceptions and skills. The assignment progressed to challenge me to allowing myself adopt the traits that would me to work easily and contribute easily to a group. It is essential to eliminate unfamiliarity with other employees in any organization that I should probably work in. This smoothens communication with both my juniors and seniors as well. Under the same, I have learnt that welcoming other peoples contribution either in skill and knowledge would go a step further to not only to strengthening an organizations capability to achieve its goal but I will learn in the process as well.
References
Bendaly, L. (1997). Strength in numbers. Toronto.: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Buelens, M. (2011). Organisational Behaviour. London: McGraw-Hill Education.
Buelens, M. (2006). Organisational Behaviour. London: McGraw-Hill.
Chevalier, R. (2007). A manager's guide to improving workplace performance. New York: AMACOM, American Management Association.
Dimensionshealth.org (1982). Dimensions Healthcare System | The Human Dimension in Medicine. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.dimensionshealth.org/ [Accessed: 27 Aug 2013].
Mcdonald, R. (1994). Cohesion, the key to special operations teamwork. Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: Air University Press.
Walshe, K. and Smith, J. (2011). Healthcare management. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: McGraw Hill/Open University Press.
