Conflict Resolution Recommendations
It is important to realize that environment of health care organizations is a highly demanding and stressful one due to the constant contact with patients requiring urgent medical treatment. Therefore, many clinical settings are closely associated with the emergence of conflicts among physicians, nurses, technologists, and other health care employees (Patton, 2014).
Leaders of HCOs have to carefully listen to involved parties in order to successfully resolve a conflict (Patton, 2014). The disputes between non-physicians and physicians could be prevented by enacting policies prohibiting verbal abuse. Moreover, all health care professionals have to be encouraged to immediately report cases of inappropriate use of language (Patton, 2014).
Sometimes, appeals to mutual religious values, as well as the desire for reconciliation based on shared tenets of religion, could bring peace to conflicting parties (Marsden, 2012). Successful managers of the HCO should be able to guide their employees with strong ethical norms that stem from the inherent “sense of higher calling” in order to reduce incidence rates of disputes (Marsden, 2012).
The implications of conflict between surgery and cardiology units might be extremely significant; therefore, it is important to establish proper communication guidelines between them in order to reduce the risk of communication failure (Cinar & Kaban, 2012). The scope of their functions and responsibilities has to be clearly drawn so that every person with a stake in the patient’s health outcomes would know their limits of responsibility. The commitment to measured performance can also help to address this issue.
It is recommendable to take enterprise conflict management (ECM) approach not only to the disputes between orthopedics and imaging but also to apply it to relationships between all units of the HCO (Cinar & Kaban, 2012). The managers of hospitals have to create a “team-oriented culture” with an emphasis on various conflict resolution techniques and methods (Cinar & Kaban, 2012). This will make any HCO an attractive worksite with low incidence rates of disputes between employees. Sometimes mandatory counseling might be needed for those members of staff who are extremely prone to conflict (Cinar & Kaban, 2012).
Emergency Referrals
Well-managed HCOs should have effective approaches for dealing with emergency referrals. There are several ways to assess different referral systems in terms of various outcome measures. The most common approach to understanding interdependencies between those views is the logic model for the representation of the pathway between stated health outcomes and interventions (Reilly & Markenson, 2010). The system-level approach can be taken to assess such measures as waiting times and access to specialists.
According to numerous studies, the combination of interventions in the process of emergency referrals at the systemic level is considerably more effective at increasing the quality of care than a one-pronged approach (Reilly & Markenson, 2010). Leaders of excellent HCOs have to ensure that patients receive the necessary information. Moreover, they should establish a network of communication between all units that will help to manage referrals.
The care services that those kinds of patients usually receive are time-sensitive and therefore have to be provided in the most efficient manner (Shaw et al., 2013). It is a duty of HCOs managers to device a system of accountability that would help to keep track of staff performance (Reilly & Markenson, 2010). There is also a need for effective coordination between different departments to provide the best service for underserved health care receivers. All budget concerns related to the creation of such systems should also be properly addressed by the managers (White, & Griffith, 2016).
It is important to remember that approximately 80 percent of uninsured patients are from employed blue-collar families (Shaw et al., 2013). Many of them are worried about substantial medical bills and afraid to lose their income. Therefore, it is important to take a collaborative and coordinated approach to the treatment of those patients in order to provide them with sufficient care services (Shaw et al., 2013).
Impaired Staff Members
An impaired staff member is an individual who is not able to adequately perform their professional duties due to physical, emotional, mental, and personality disorders or other factors such as age, substance use or abuse (Craig Hospital, 2012). The leaders of HCOs have to devise and implement a set of policies that would address all concerns related to the management of impaired or obstructive staff members.
The investigations of practitioners exhibiting behavior that could be tied to either some health conditions or excessive use of substances have to be conducted in accordance with the state or federal law (Craig Hospital, 2012). They are also regulated under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (Craig Hospital, 2012).
It is important to keep in mind, that every member of the clinical staff is responsible for the provision of the information related to their ability to perform medical duties. Therefore, all personnel has to inform the management of the HCO about any changes in their health impairing professional performance (Craig Hospital, 2012). The leadership of well-coordinated health care clinics often relies on third party reports that provide accounts of reasonable suspicion claims about the staff’s health. To this end, all medical personnel has to be trained in the methods of impairment recognition (Craig Hospital, 2012).
References
Cinar, F., & Kaban, A. (2012). Conflict management and visionary leadership: an application in hospital organizations. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 58(4), 197-206.
Craig Hospital. (2012). Impaired practitioner/disruptive behaviors.
Marsden, L. (2012). The Ashgate research companion to religion and conflict resolution. Farnham, England: Ashgate.
Patton, C., M. (2014). Conflict in Health Care: A Literature Review. The Internet Journal of Healthcare Administration, 9(1).
Reilly, M., & Markenson, D. (2010). Hospital Referral Patterns: How Emergency Medical Care Is Accessed in a Disaster. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 4(3), 226-231.
Shaw, E., Howard, J., Clark, E., Etz, R., Arya, R.,…Tallia, A. (2013). Decision-Making Processes of Patients Who Use the Emergency Department for Primary Care Needs. Journal of Health Care for The Poor and Underserved, 24(3), 1288-1305.
White, K., & Griffith, J. R. (2016). The well-managed healthcare organization. Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press.