Through the planning of the strategic plan, various parties were involved, and the management of the hospital gave the go-ahead in compiling this strategy. The long-term employees at the hospital provided information on the development of the facility since its establishment. The researcher questioned the Patients to give the diseases they have had in their history and the most pertinent one that had to lead them to their admission to the facility. Records in the archives provided critical information in forecasting the bed required in the future to meet the need of those who come to the nursing home. The researcher surveyed the emerging trends in the environment to help formulate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that may influence the unit.
Organization/ Unit Vision Statement
The vision of the nursing home unit is to be a preference for customers who require high-quality health care in the most elaborate of ways. The Team also seeks to work in unity with the patients and the community as large to ensure that in the next three years the nursing home unit has expanded considerably to cater to more needs of senior citizens.
Organization/ Unit Mission Statement
The mission of the nursing home is to provide health care to the senior citizens in the community through offering admission beds in twelve days. The core values are to ensure that a team of the highest quality and honesty in delivering services attends to all.
Organization Core Values
It will be possible to accomplish the mission of the unit through the keen concentration and commitment of the facility management, the supervisor in the nursing home unit, and the staff at large in a caring environment that will bring the following fundamental values into focus:
- Providing an accurate moral compass
- Honesty in delivering health services and care
- Quality in the nursing services provided
- Embracing the diversity of individuals by providing nursing services to all
Overview of the Organization
The Medical facility has an estimated patient population of 300,000 visits. The facility is on 28 acres with an attached nursing home and was opened in 1970 to provide general medical-surgical and psychiatric services. It serves as an AIDS/HIV center, a Prosthetic Treatment Centre, Nursing home Patients, Spinal Cord Injury, rehab, Geriatric Research, education, and Clinical Centre. The facility is recognized as a Centre of Excellence in Spinal Cord Injury Research, Substance Abuse Treatment, and Chest pain center. It is a tertiary referral facility for the Virginia facility and provides open heart surgery to other medical facilities.
The facility operates 300 hospital beds; the bed composition is 50 in the rehab department, 85 in medical 50 in psychiatry 40 in the spinal cord, 50 in surgical, and 15 in neurology. The nursing home has 40 beds with respites patients who are admitted in the nursing for only 12 days then discharged. The facility also has two major satellite Outpatient Clinics located in the Carolinas.
SWOT analysis
The Nursing Home provides care for patients for around twelve days then dismisses the patient. Iyer (2006) suggests that this may be a strength, as most people do not want to be in a nursing home for a long time because they prefer people they know and those that are familiar to them surrounding them. This is an emerging trend among those suffering from HIV/AIDS as they abhor staying in a nursing home for a long time hence this unit has an advantage in the time frame it admits its patients
The weakness of limited beds for admission faces the unit where according to Dickinson, Vosen & Biedermann (2006), so many older people are ending up spending most of their lives in a nursing home. If a patient does not leave to make room for another in the nursing home unit, then the facility will be unable to deliver its services to more people and this may serve as a major setback to the facility in failing to reach one of its values that describes it as being diverse.
According to Silin (2009), most aging people prefer facilities of nurses who are skilled but then again they opt for personalized health care offered to them at their place of residence. This is an opportunity for the nursing home unit to offer services through prescriptions daily and provide the seniors with an on-site registered nurse. Dicken (2009) also brings out another opportunity that the nursing home unit may embrace in the future by establishing the fact that those in the unit may not be in a position to access the internet or even answer calls so the nurses may come in handy to make these extra resources available to the patient.
Care plan Information, reveals the fact that most senior citizens can develop low self-esteem or even get depressed if a nursing home locks them up with minimal interaction with the outside world. The Unit should take this as an opportunity and ensure that they have a calendar of events lined up for them such as going to movies, board game tournaments, and visiting other senior citizens.
Home Care for seniors is a helpline that encourages senior citizens to opt for recovery from an illness at the comfort of their homes. This may pose a threat to the nursing home unit because the senior citizens may choose to postpone a visit to the nursing home because they have been encouraged to embrace homecare and providing ‘tailor-made care to the individual would harness this.
Harris & Benson (2006) puts across another threat that most nursing homes are viewed as the death bed of most people and this scares most senior citizens from agreeing to be admitted in a nursing home. The Unit can counter this threat by ensuring that they have a record with minimal deaths and dispel such rumors among the patients.
Critical areas
- Staffing in nursing homes is becoming an issue where nurses lack consistency in providing healthcare to the patient. This may be because a particular nurse works two jobs and may constantly switch shifts or keep leaving for his or her ventures. There is a need to address this critical issue in time.
- With the increasing number of people who require health care from a nursing home, the ratio of the residents to the nurses is becoming high and this critical issue needs to be addressed before the nursing home starts being ineffective by enrolling enough caregivers to cater to the number of residents.
- Some nursing homes according to Morrison & Monagle (2009) are coming up to take care of those senior citizens who are not able to depend on themselves and in most instances, such nursing homes are backed by the government.
Goals and objectives
- To provide the residents of the nursing home unit with dignity as they go about satisfying their social needs and nourishing themselves spiritually.
- To take up the role of identifying the needs of the senior citizens in the community and meet their needs in a contemporary way that is creative and appropriate.
- To treat all the patients with high standards of health care and be diverse in the senior citizens who can access our services.
Plans
- The nursing home unit in one year will establish a common area for the residents to draw spiritual nourishment from and ensure there is a weekly visit by religious leaders whose religion the residents represent.
- In one year, the nursing home unit will schedule events that will see the residents and senior citizens from the surrounding participate.
- The nursing home unit will also provide door-to-door care from September 2012 to ensure that they reach those in the community who may opt to live in the house but would require proper nursing from qualified professionals.
Summary
Nursing homes are growing in demand and since there are so many of them, people are opting for those that provide quality health care. Quality may also vary but a resident of a nursing home will be more at ease and may continue to live a happy life if one consistent nurse attends to them. According to Allen (2011), the patient will create a relationship with the nurse that will attend to parts of their social needs. With time, the Nursing home unit will require expanding by increasing the number of beds because more people are developing lifestyle diseases that for example may relate to the heart and they would prefer nurses attending them from home rather than a hospital. Concisely, the needs of the resident should be met and the nursing home itself should dynamically change to ensure that it remains relevant with the times.
References
Allen, J. (2011). Nursing home federal requirements: Guidelines to surveyors and survey protocols. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.
Dicken, J. (2009). Nursing Homes: Opportunity Exist to facilitate the use of the temporary Management sanction. Washington DC: United States Government Accountability Office.
Dickinson, L., Vosen, X., & Biedermann, S. (2006). Living well in a nursing home: Everything you and your folks need to know. Alameda: Hunter House Inc Publishers.
Harris, D., & Benson, M. (2006). Maltreatment of patients in horsing homes: there is no safe place. New York, NY: The Haworth Press.
Iyer, P. (2006). Nursing home litigation: investigation and case preparation. Tucson: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Co.inc.
Morrison, E., & Monagle, J. (2009). Health care ethics: critical issues for the 21st century. Ontario: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Silin, P. (2009). Nursing homes and Assisted Living: The family’s Guide to making decisions. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.