Introduction
The health care crisis in the United States is confined by specific problems, including nursing turnover and nursing shortage. This is attributed to presence of occupational hazards, poor work-life balances, unreasonable workloads, and poor workers’ relationship, among others (Wunderlich et al., 1996). These problems are not new and are widely covered by existing literature. This paper focuses on implementing a plan to reduce turnover, retain the current staff, and recruit new staff in a bid to improve patient satisfaction. The study is paramount because it affects multiple stakeholders, including the managers concerned with recruitment and the patients receiving nursing care.
Analysis
Organizational Goal
The plan aims at improving awareness and knowledge level of the management on reducing staff turnover. The goal of the organization is to ensure that it comes up with a framework that supports positive practices in order to minimize the risks of patients within the health care setting. This framework entails employing Positive Practice Environment, as it serves the role of encouraging the clinical officers as well as providing them with the appropriate feedback (Gantz, 2009).
Thus, the management team will set a target that will assess whether the goal of reducing staff turnover, as well as increasing patient satisfaction scores has been achieved in a period of 1 year. This target will entail increasing nurses’ satisfaction with regard to their wellbeing and safety within the health care institution by 40%, and increasing patients’ satisfaction by 60%.
The Staff that will be involved in the Change Process
Nurses and physicians/doctors are the main source of data because they provide insight on diverse operations and challenges they encounter in the course of their work, and their effects on healthcare delivery processes and outcomes. Engaging the nurses will help in assessing the psychological hazards the nurses undergo while carrying out their tasks. These hazards normally emanate from the lack of respect between the nurses, as well as between the nurses and doctors due to the presence of undefined workloads within clinical settings. Additionally, poor autonomy principle, insufficient support for the nurses, and low levels of morale contribute highly to an increase in nursing turnover (Wunderlich et al., 1996).
In addition to this, involving the nurses and physicians/doctors in the change process helps us understand how the presence of unreasonable workloads has portrayed a bad image for the doctors-nurses relationship. More so, the presence of discord among nurses is evident due to unequal opportunities within the health care setting. Hence, the nurses contribute to patients’ dissatisfactions due to unreasonable workload, as well as their poor relationship with the physicians (Chen & University of Maryland, 2008).
The Required Skills for Implementing Change
Clinical transformation refers to the implementation of a new process intended to improve workflow as well as service delivery outcomes in the clinical setting. The four critical skills I require for implementing change that would ensure a reduction of turnover, maintenance of the current staff, and recruitment of new staff include the staffing, leadership, communication, and the evaluation skills (Sullivan & Decker, 2005).
The staffing skills entail applying the relevant knowledge on how to come up with a hiring process that is congruent with the goals of the health care institution, and at the same time, making sure that the skills of the new workers match well with the current nurses (Roussel, Swansburg, & Swansburg, 2006). As the director, I will develop the staffing skills by carrying out an in-depth qualitative research on why the nurses are obliged to work in clinical setting, rather than emphasizing on the reason why the nurses leave the health care setting. In doing so, I will be in a position to strengthen the strong areas of retaining the staff within the health care setting.
The leadership skills entail ensuring that the views of the nurses are incorporated in the decision making process (Sullivan & Decker, 2005). As the director, I will develop the leadership skills by intensifying and promoting the nurses’ organizations, engaging the nurses in the brainstorming sessions through the empowerment model initiative, providing opportunities for research/career advancement, upholding nurses survey as a strategy of assessing motivation, as well as assessing the nurses’ well being through a number of indicators(Roussel, Swansburg, & Swansburg, 2006 ).
The communication skills will entail disseminating information on the rationale behind safety in the clinical setting and on the presence of a strong work environment with respect to retention and recruitments of nurse practitioners (Sullivan & Decker, 2005). I will develop communication skills by being open-minded to ideas from all the staff members (Roussel, Swansburg, & Swansburg, 2006). The evaluation skills, on the other hand, entail having the ability to set a target of the expected outcome of results (Sullivan & Decker, 2005). I will develop the evaluation skills by electing stakeholders, such as the health professionals as well as other entities involved in policies that assess the diverse hazards within the health care setting, as they help to highlight the weak points that necessitate improvement through training (Roussel, Swansburg, & Swansburg, 2006).
The Required Staff Skills for Change Implementation
The nurses need to acquire autonomy clinical skills that would enable them solve patients’ problems independently. The autonomy skills can be developed by adopting patient allocation model rather than the task allocation model (Levett-Jones & Bourgeois, 2010). In doing so, the nurses will have total responsibility for the patient and can no longer compromise the health care of the patients. In turn, this facilitates development of therapeutic skills, which help the patient to heal in areas where empathy is required.
Additionally, the nurses need to have good communication skills that help to eradicate work overlap emanating from increased levels of medical data. This communication should act as a decision support for the nurses by alerting them in cases where the clinical practitioners are not complying with professional practices. The communication skills will be developed through acquiring the relevant training on handling the modern communication strategy: the electronic health record.
Reaching Consensus
The rational decision-making model will facilitate reaching a point of consensus in the decision making process. This model is critical due to its strengths, which include the ability to analyze the hazards facing the health care setting explicitly through the brainstorming sessions, the ability to come up with a number of alternatives in the decision making process, and the ability to come up with balanced decisions due to the stakeholders’ involvement (Jones & Beck, 1996). However, the consensus will be reached by striking a balance between the nurses, the managers, as well as the stakeholders’ decisions to a point where it defines an organizational culture that facilitates a good workflow and health service outcomes for the patients. In this case, a number of issues will be discussed, including adopting patient allocation model and the electronic health record.
Ways of Communicating Change to all the Current and the New Staff
The process of change will be communicated appropriately since the rate at which change is achieved can affect the results of staffing requirements either negatively or positively (Tyler & Parker, 2011). Hence, the change will be carried out in a manner that facilitates proper management of information to the staff. This will be achieved by designing timeframes for dissemination of information on the change process, and the change will be communicated by addressing all the disciplines in the healthcare institution. Thus, each head of department will be entitled to communicate the change process to the employees under his/her department. Communication will also be enhanced by printed papers, as well as through the organization’s website.
Ways of Engaging Staff from all the Departments
A certain degree of collaboration between health care providers is paramount in any health care setting. For the inpatients, a careful coordination of services between nurses, nursing assistants, and physicians must be evident, while for the outpatient, the health care providers are required to operate at varying levels of collaboration not only with workers from the same discipline but also with the workers from the billing as well as the accounts department. To facilitate cooperation between all the members of the staff, I will emphasize on teamwork through the team learning theory. Adopting this theory is paramount since it helps to build an organization that has a common goal/ mission (Tyler & Parker, 2011). More so, team-learning theory allows the entire organization to be cognizant of the patterns of interaction that undermine organizational goals.
References
Chen, Y., & University of Maryland. (2008). Title Nurses’ work environment and job satisfaction. Louisville, KY: ProQuest.
Gantz, N. R. (2009). 101 global leadership lessons for nurses: Shared legacies from leaders and their mentors. Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.
Jones, R. A., & Beck, S. E. (1996). Decision making in nursing. Albany: Delmar Publishers.
Levett-Jones, T., & Bourgeois, S. (2010). The clinical placement: An essential guide for nursing students. Chatswood, N.S.W: Elsevier.
Roussel, L., Swansburg, R. J., & Swansburg, R. C. (2006). Management and leadership for nurse administrators. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Sullivan, E. J., & Decker, P. J. (2005). Effective leadership and management in nursing. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Tyler, D., & Parker, V. (2011). Nursing home culture, teamwork, and culture change. Journal of Research in Nursing, 16 (1), 37-49.
Wunderlich, G. S., Sloan, F. A., Davis, C. K., Institute of Medicine (U.S.)., & National Academies Press (U.S.). (1996). Nursing staff in hospitals and nursing homes: Is it adequate?. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press.