It is important to note that public healthcare organizations are very different from private healthcare ones. The clientele visiting private organizations are largely high-profile clients in comparison to those visiting public healthcare organizations. As a result, the health care delivery system at these private hospitals is top-notch, and clients are free to give their opinions. In addition, private hospitals may modify nationally accepted guidelines to suit their purposes. This paper aims at reviewing the nursing department at Texas Children’s Hospital with a focus on Clear Lake Children’s Center.
The Meyer and O’Brien-Pallas (2010) nursing delivery open system theory guides the analysis of Texas Children’s Hospital and in particular, Clear Lake Center. Texas Children’s Hospital is a private hospital that mandates itself the responsibility of providing nothing but the best health care services. There are both inpatient and outpatients divisions that cater to the varied health needs of the clients.
This paper will specify the outpatient department, of which Clear Lake Children’s Center is part (Texas Children’s Hospital, 2014). The nursing department in any hospital is very critical. The personnel in this department have a longer and deeper interaction with clients in comparison to other practitioners within the hospital. In Texas Children’s Hospital, the nurse has diversified roles that oversee its smooth running. The nurse is the most important person because he or she ensures that the various resources required for the running of the clinic are readily available. The nurse ensures that all the necessary vaccinations for children are available.
The nurse liaises with the public sector to get the supplies provided by the government, in addition to purchases from private institutions that engage in franchising their products. There is a sophisticated communication system that updates nurses on the healthcare sector in the country. Thereby, keep up with the changing times.
The Texas Children’s Hospital tries to align itself with favorable labor market conditions; thus, aims at ensuring the ratio of nurses to patients being served is proportionate. However, there are shortage issues that usually arise during emergencies, or when one nurse is not available, and there are no locum nurses. This shortage of staff is the case at Clear Lake Children’s Center due to a recent retirement phase, and recruitment of new personnel is yet to complete. This shortage interferes with service delivery since the nurses, two at the moment, attend to the patients in the emergency department/room. Assuming another emergency comes up the center would be in a bizarre situation.
Due to the low number of clients at this center, the management does not find it necessary to get more nurses, but evidently, the nurses at Clear Lake suffer from too much workload. Other than dealing with emergencies, the nurses are the people who assess the patients in terms of anthropometric measurements and vital signs. In addition, they train other personnel on infection control and identification of critical cases that would require immediate attention from one of the nurses, such as TB and severely sick patients.
The Clear Lake Children’s Center does not have many clients. The consultant seen governs the division of clients. The nurses document the number of clients seen, procedures done, facilitated admissions, working conditions of all equipment used in service delivery, and make comments on the nature of the day. In addition, an evaluation of the revenue made by the center is very imperative because it determines its maintenance capability.
The department is currently undergoing thorough transformations in a bid to gain accreditation from the Joint Commission International. The clinic usually gives clients what they call ‘patient feedback forms.’ These forms give the client an avenue to air their opinions regarding the nature of the services received.
The nurse is like the steering wheel of the Texas Children’s Hospital, and if anything goes wrong with this department, then everything else goes wrong. Clear Lake Center adopts an open system (Catalano, 2012) that does not put a boundary between itself and any outsider. As a result, obtaining information is easy because the center deems it as a way of creating awareness, and getting ideas on how to become better in the field of health care delivery.
Unfortunately, due to the insufficient number of nurses, there is a halt to the routine processes when an emergency arises. Reference to the gap of a nurse shortage, the desired outcome to address this problem is to ensure that the hospital’s routine activities do not halt in the case of an emergency, or any other procedure that will require one or both nurses to take part in the procedure. The goal of this outcome is to maintain efficiency and quality of health care delivery, regardless of emergency procedures that require the centralization of inputs. To achieve this, there will be a need to:
- Identify the number of additional nurses required.
- Identify additional equipment required.
- Prepare a schedule each day that indicates the personnel to attend to emergency procedures.
- Train personnel on how to respond to emergency procedures without creating an environment filled with tension that can affect the other clients.
- Identification of reliable ambulatory services to facilitate transfer in the case of an outpatient facility.
These objectives sum up into a policy that guides the nurses on how to respond during an emergency. Usually, that is not the time to begin negotiating about what to do and who should take part in the emergency/procedure. It is important to know the required number of nurses in such a situation; thus, in addition to that number, there should always be an extra nurse on duty to oversee the other operations such as triaging and wellness services. In addition, the nursing personnel should have training sessions on how to take care of children during an emergency. Also, the center should identify a reliable ambulatory service if the hospital’s ambulatory services are not available to facilitate prompt transfer in the case of a child who requires such.
According to the American College of Emergency Physicians (2014) guidelines for the care of children in the emergency department, all hospitals and related agencies should be fully equipped with personnel and supplies needed in case an emergency arises. Resolving this issue enables the clinic to remain as a leading agency in health care delivery and ensure that children stay healthy and lead tomorrow (Glennister, 2011). There will be more organization within the facility, and increased effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of health care. Nurses do not have to operate between emergencies and routine activities.
The system theory, precisely the open systems theory, is deemed relevant to nursing because it embraces a comprehensive framework while allowing individuals to make purposeful contributions towards improved organizational outcomes. The Clear Lake Children’s Health Center, an affiliate of the Texas children’s Hospital, has been the center of analysis in this paper. In a recent upgrade to meet labor market conditions, some employees were given retirement to pave way for a new generation of personnel. In so doing, there was a deficit created in some affiliate clinics/centers, to which Clear Lake fell victim. Emergencies and nursing procedures were a norm that greatly interfered with daily routine activities. A correction of this deficit will enable the center to continue offering reliable health services.
References
American College of Emergency Physicians. (2014). Guidelines for Care of Children in the Emergency Department. Web.
Catalano, J. (2012). Nursing Now! Today’s Issues, Tomorrow’s Trends (6th ed.). Philadelphia: F. A. Davis.
Glennister, D. (2011). Towards a general systems theory of nursing: A literature review. Web.
Meyer, R. M., & O’Brien-Pallas, L. L. (2010). Nursing services delivery theory: An open system approach. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 66(12), 2828–2838.
Texas Children’s Hospital. (2014). Health Centers: Texas Children’s Health Centers. Web.