Professional Development
Professional Development
Professional Development Assignment (60 points)
For a hospital to operate efficiently and effectively, the three important influences in its governance, medical staff, board of trustees, and administration, must work together in reasonable harmony. What factors contribute to the tension that usually exists among them?
Organizations such as the LeapFrog Group represent a growing trend to survey and report on the quality of hospital care and to make the findings available to the public. What are your opinions about the public’s readiness to deal with having this information available and using it to make choices about medical care?
Hospitals are facing unprecedented financial challenges from entrepreneurial physician initiatives that are establishing competitive, free-standing diagnostic and treatment centers and specialty hospitals. In your opinion, what are the advantages and disadvantages to these developments from a patient perspective?
Each response should be 500-1000 words
APA formatting required
Although each response is a separate essay of 500-1000 words, all responses should be combined into a single document for submission
SOLUTION
Professional Development
Response 1
In health care setting, a group of factors and faculties has to be coordinated in order to realize effectiveness and efficiency in their care delivery systems. Collaboration between the personnel from the different departments of a medical facility would pave the way for cooperation and togetherness in handling health care matters at all levels (Fero, Herrick & Jie, 2011).
These factors or faculties that are believed to propel efficiency and effectiveness in nursing practice include governance, board of trustees, administration and medical staff. For the board of trustees, these are the authorities given power by the federal government to act on its behalf in protecting and exercising administration over health care facilities for the proper use.
Governance on the other side refers to the leadership styles applied in nursing practices and the best styles would be servant and transformational leadership. Administration is the body charged with the responsibility of enforcing the nursing standards, rules and regulation upon the medical staff. Finally, the medical staff is the personnel or rather the health care providers who deal directly with the patients.
Embarking on the core question posed for response, one would say that efficiency and effectiveness would only be achieved in health care delivery systems if the aforementioned four faculties work hand-in-hand. However, there are factors that cause tension among these faculties such that collaboration and togetherness in working becomes a challenge.
The term tension has been used in this paper’s context to refer to that strained working relation among the above mentioned health care areas. The nature of having tension among these four specialties triggers other detrimental elements such as hatred, jealous and non-cooperation among medical staff.
The tension situation makes medical personnel to lack the loyalty and support for each other in the workplace setting since every person is determined to outperform their counterparts (Freshman, Rubino & Chassiakos, 2010). Below is a discussion of the various factors that cause and enhance tension among the board of trustees, medical staff, administration, and governance.
Departmental Competitiveness
In many cases, the organizational setting presents working environment that compels the employees to exercise inter-competition among them. For example, every department wants to be the best at what they do and gain the number one rank organization-wide. Therefore, the condition sets pace for the inter-organizational competition among the various departments such that tension surfaces in the context.
A department would try to acquire and control majority of the resources in order to ensure that they utilize them for improved performance. Thus, the resource-based competition brings in the tension among the medical staff, the administration, trustees and the governance since there is inadequate resource allocation to some of these faculties.
Hence, there would not be efficiency and effectiveness acquired in the long-run since the faculties that should be working in unity are merely competing amongst them. The departmental competitiveness can be said to undermine the efficiency and effectiveness course.
Strictness of the Nursing Regulations/Rules
The more rigid and stringent the nursing regulations are, the more the tension among the medical personnel. The fact these strict rules come along with disciplinary measures in case one is caught violating them, the condition makes the aforementioned faculties adopt conservative working relations since they do not trust their counterparts actions for they might land them in problems with the nursing board.
In every specialty, the medical staff there seems to work in fear for they do not want to loose their professional license due to violation of the nursing regulations. Therefore, you would find that the strict regulations increase the tension among medical personnel for they do not want to be dismissed from work due to mistakes caused by other work colleagues.
Personalized Thirst for Power and Authority
Individual members might also affect the working relationship among administration, governance, board of trustees, and medical staff due to their greed for power and authority over others. The common cases in nursing that might lead to tension are such as having greedy departmental leaders.
The act of competing for power and authority over the other supervisor of different departments leads to tension in the working relations across these faculties. The relations can be said to be strained since the departmental heads are not cooperating amongst them since they want to be powerful over each other.
Response 2
The current increased practices of surveying and reporting on hospital care quality has presented immeasurable impacts in the health care sector. Companies such as LeapFrog Group have been on the forefront in performing the surveys and report formulation, and dispensation of the results to the public through best channel possible.
The information disclosed to the public by such firms is of essence since individuals might rely on it to make the best choices concerning their medical care. However, you would find that the public is not ready to use such information in the correct way or for their health care purposes. A number of factors and conditions might render the public incapable of benefitting from such information.
Fear of loosing the Practitioner’s Trust
In many cases, the poor quality presented in hospital care is often associated with insufficient supply of drugs, medical facilities, and medical personnel. The problem of having low quality hospital care is not caused by the existing medical staff. Therefore, one would allege that the public is not ready to deal with this information since it would use it to organize for protests against the medical staff of a given hospital, instead of the government which is responsible for inadequate medical supplies.
Thus, it is right to say that the public might not be ready to deal with the information reported to them by the survey companies that evaluate hospitals’ care quality. The public is always agitated to respond by planning protests against any party that violates their expectations and dispensing such information to them would obviously trigger such retaliations. Therefore, it would create a situation whereby the medical practitioners will feel pushed to the limit by the public for the mistake they are absolutely not responsible and in turn making them lose trust on patients.
There is no way an individual will attend to a patient who has recently protested against them. Thus, one would say that the public is not ready to use the information presented on hospital care quality in the right way for they would trigger protests which makes the medical staff become conservative when it comes to administering care on patients.
Health Care Affordability
The public might have the right information at their disposal, but the question is whether they would use it to make apt decisions about their medical care. The information at hand shows the kind of care provided in different hospitals in relation to quality. Therefore, individuals will evaluate which hospital offers the best care with subject to affordability.
The best to the public is that they can afford. Thus, on integrating this notion of affordability, one would denote that the public has used the information about hospital care quality in the wrong way. The information is meant to help individuals choose the best health care services based on their quality and not affordability. The cheaper and more subsidized the health care, the poorer the quality. Hence, it would right for one to assert that the public is not ready to use the information at hand for the right choice of medical care for they based their opinions on affordability instead of quality.
Response 3
The emergence of the free-standing diagnostic and specialty hospitals which are primarily established and developed by entrepreneurial physician initiatives has caused a lot of financial challenges to majority of the hospitals. These personal-owned new treatment centers have helped the general population in various ways, in spite of the few demerits that come along with them. Arguing from a patient’s perspective, one would associate the development of these new health care entrepreneurial physician initiatives with the following merits.
Advantages of the Initiatives
Cheap/Affordable Health Care Services
Being one of the biggest challenges to hospitals, these new treatment centers have posed a great financial challenge to the existing hospitals in relation to the fee charged for every service provided to patients. Most of the services here like clinical consultation, therapy and drugs prescriptions are lowly priced compared to the normal hospitals fees.
Therefore, individuals have opted for their services since the care provided there is of the same quality or even better compared to that of ordinary hospitals. The numbers of patients in such health facilities is increasing while in the usual hospitals it is decreasing due to the price differentials (Jasper, Rosser & Mooney, 2013).
Reliability and Accessibility
Majority of these treatment centers are often established at a community proximity that makes the common citizens to access them with ease. One does not have to board a bus to city just for a simple medical check-up since the entrepreneurial physicians have localized the health care services. Also, these developments are characterized by reliability in sense that individuals can remotely contact the doctors to their homes if the patients cannot afford to be mobile.
Therefore, it is quite challenging for the ordinary hospitals since they are mostly located in the urban areas where patient population is large and the medical staff has to go through a complex procedure before they get an approval to visit a patient at their homes.
Reduced Wait Time
Considering the fact that the patient population at the localities where majority of these treatment centers are established is low, this has consequentially led to reduced patient wait time. Individuals prefer these medical facilities for they would spend a short period of time to be diagnosed and prescribed for the best therapy and medication. Hence, most people would definitely prefer going for health care services in such facilities.
Disadvantages
Inadequate Medical Facilities
On the other hand, these new developments come with demerits such as insufficient medical facilities. The size and capital used to run these facilities is so small that the owners cannot afford to equip them with all the necessary medical equipment. For example, you would find that there are no laboratories for blood tests and if present, then the facilities are limited. Others like x-ray machines and scanners would not be available since most of them are very expensive for such facilities.
Reduced Number of Medical Staff
The size of these treatment centers is so small such that it requires approximately 10-15 medical practitioners to run all the services. Hence, this is a demerit that makes the increasing population have insufficient number of attendants to serve them in the shortest time possible.
References
Fero, L., Herrick, C. & Jie. (2011). Introduction to care coordination and nursing management. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Freshman, B., Rubino, L. & Chassiakos, Y. (2010). Collaboration across the disciplines in health care. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Jasper, M., Rosser, M. & Mooney, G. (2013). Professional development, reflection, and decision-making in nursing and health care. Chichester, West Sussex Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
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