The culture of excellence is one of the most impactful factors for an organization’s sustainable growth and efficiency. Today, many businesses include striving to superiority into their companies’ value statements, contracts, and management practices. The culture of excellence is also appropriate for the healthcare industry as it addresses the demand in improving patient safety, quality of treatment, and facilities’ working environment (Smith & Plunkett, 2019). Indeed, most hospitals’ mission, vision, and values consider continuous enhancement and advantaging as their main aspirations. Including a culture of excellence in the main statements and regulations helps facilities and executives develop leadership approaches to maintain superiority in all organizational levels (Carvalho et al., 2019). All departments must be willing to deliver the highest quality of their services, and the motivation to continue performing at best needs to be a part of administrative operations (Carvalho et al., 2019). This paper aims to discuss the characteristics of a culture of excellence, explore the mission, vision, values of San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Medical Center as an example, and identify the appropriate leadership strategies.
A culture of excellence has always existed in many businesses as a necessary approach to delivering a high-quality product. The older implementation was related to strict rules, fines, and punishments for disobedience, yet the novel strategies are based on employees’ and executives’ encouragement, mission statement, and rewarding. The concept of a culture of excellence is to maintain personnel’s conviction that their work is meaningful and requires to be performed with superiority and be continuously improved (Hayne et al., 2020). The workspace environment, company values, and bonus systems are the common drivers of the employees’ motivations necessary to exercise the state of advance. Furthermore, effective leadership practices that comply with the mission applied in the organization are crucial for the concept of superiority to be successfully implemented.
The culture of excellence includes multiple characteristics and practices that must exist in organizations to maintain high-quality service delivery through the employees’ willingness to improve. Firstly, collective commitment to the purpose and mission are necessary for a company to exercise the concept of superiority (Smith & Plunkett, 2019). For instance, healthcare facilities’ personnel must understand the importance of patient safety and appliance of the most workable and evidence-based practices as part of their organization’s mission. If there are examples of their colleagues who saved lives and timely provided high-quality treatment for clients, the employees would be more committed to their workplace values.
Moreover, the culture of excellence is focused on high performance, therefore organizations must create the circumstances where their workforce will be the most efficient for the most prolonged period. Indeed, in the healthcare industry, working schedules, facility conditions, tools, and rewarding systems impact productivity and must be addressed by the executives. Personnel surrounded by a convenient environment with sufficient materials will be more motivated to perform at their best. Lastly, the culture of excellence’s organizational characteristic is clear and open communication with integrity and mutual respect between all employees and executives (Medeiros, 2020). In a healthcare facility setting, the ability to reach for support or raise a problem is vital to support superiority because concealing information might lead to patient safety risks.
A culture of excellence is significant for the healthcare industry, and striving to provide the best quality of service must be a skill developed in every individual who works there regardless of their role or facility. Modern educational programs include various subjects and motivational programs for the students to help them get continuous self-improvement and make the best of any activity (Hayne et al., 2020). Consequently, people learn to implement the culture of excellence in their daily lives, and understanding its effectiveness helps them deal with challenges at work where performing at the advanced level is crucial.
The significance of the culture of excellence for a healthcare facility’s performance can be explored through an example of San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Medical Center. The hospital’s values encourage personnel to deliver high-quality service, improve conditions and patients’ safety by performing at their best. St. Mary’s Medical Center’s (2021) mission states that “through teamwork and innovation, faith and compassion, advocacy and action, we endeavor every day to keep our patients happy, healthy, and whole.” The Center’s (2021) vision is “a healthier future for all, inspired by faith, driven by innovation, and powered by our humanity.” If viewed through the concept map, the key values of the facilities would be teamwork, faith, innovation, action, and humanism.
St. Mary’s Medical Center’s mission, vision, and values reflect a culture of excellence because they address willingness to improve their patients’ lives through actions made of faith and pure intentions. The facility’s value statements include serving with passion and exceeding the expectations of others, and these aspirations are related to striving for superiority (Dignity Health: St. Mary’s Medical Center, 2021). Moreover, the Center uses such terms as teamwork and innovation, meaning that the organization has exercises collaborative work and continuously improves the healthcare practices.
Leadership is the primary factor that helps develop, promote, and maintain the culture of excellence at any organization. The management approaches must be narrow and specific, therefore selected based on the facility’s and team’s values, mission, practices, and employees’ understanding (Medeiros, 2020). For instance, leadership for professionals of nursing informatics requires considering the safety policies, frequent changes in innovative technologies, and communicational challenges that might occur. Consequently, the strategies can be: committing to continuous education and skills improvement and communicating organizational values through actions (Medeiros, 2020). The first tactic is necessary for the given specialty track as personnel’s aspiration to learn more and become better in their activities would inevitably lead to excellence in the services they deliver and overall higher performance. The second strategy helps the nursing professionals feel considerable for the entire organization’s proper functioning and increase their motivation to follow the mission.
As Chamberlain Care Model is crucial for developing a culture of excellence among nursing professionals, the identified strategies must be analyzed through its statements. The framework requires addressing the care of self, colleagues, and students, and therefore creating a trusting environment in educational and clinical settings (Hayne et al., 2020). The leadership strategies of committing to continuous skills improvement and communicating organizational values through actions reflect the Chamberlain Care Model. They include supervisors’ active involvement in their subordinates’ work, caring for the latter’s conditions, and profoundly influencing the results.
The culture of excellence is important for organizations that build values around delivering high-quality services and developing the willingness to perform efficiently among the employees. The most convenient approach of implementing the concept of superiority is to state it in the mission and deliberately exercise it through the leadership strategies. Executives can utilize the culture of excellence by committing the personnel to continuous skills improvement and showing the importance of values through active example. For instance, the St. Mary’s Medical Center’s statements include respect for teamwork, faith, innovation, action, and humanism, and its leadership must be dedicated to addressing these concepts. Work on the assignment was necessary to gain insights into the culture of excellence’s importance for healthcare facilities’ performance. Moreover, options to implement striving to superiority were studied and considered for the future advanced practice at MSN specialty track of informatics.
References
Carvalho, A. M., Sampaio, P., Rebentisch, E., Carvalho, J. Á., & Saraiva, P. (2019). Operational excellence, organizational culture and agility: the missing link?. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 30(13-14), 1495-1514.
Dignity Health: St. Mary’s Medical Center. (2021). Mission, vision, and values.
Hayne, A. N., Schlosser, S. P., & McDaniel, G. S. (2020). A caring model for nursing education. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, 17(1).
Medeiros, M. (2020). Cultivate a culture of excellence at the point of care.Nursing Management, 51(5), 7-9.
Smith, A. F., & Plunkett, E. (2019). People, systems and safety: resilience and excellence in healthcare practice. Anaesthesia, 74(4), 508-517.