NURS – 6053N
Module 2: Professionalism (Week 3)
Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Competing needs arise within any organization as employees seek to meet their targets and leaders seek to meet company goals. As a leader, successful management of these goals requires establishing priorities and allocating resources accordingly.
Within a healthcare setting, the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients are often in conflict. Mandatory overtime, implementation of staffing ratios, use of unlicensed assisting personnel, and employer reductions of education benefits are examples of practices that might lead to conflicting needs in practice.
Leaders can contribute to both the problem and the solution through policies, action, and inaction. In this Assignment, you will further develop the white paper you began work on in Module 1 by addressing competing needs within your organization.
To Prepare:
• Review the national healthcare issue/stressor you examined in your Assignment for Module 1, and review the analysis of the healthcare issue/stressor you selected.
• Identify and review two evidence-based scholarly resources that focus on proposed policies/practices to apply to your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
• Reflect on the feedback you received from your colleagues on your Discussion post regarding competing needs.
The Assignment (4-5 pages):
Developing Organizational Policies and Practices
Add a section to the paper you submitted in Module 1. The new section should address the following:
• Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
• Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
• Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
• Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
• Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.
• Due to the nature of this assignment, your instructor may require more than 7 days to provide you with quality feedback.
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Solution
Accomplishing organizational goals is usually a major focus of any organization. Therefore, organizations can accomplish such goals through sharing the responsibility with the employees. However, during such efforts, competing needs usually arise. The implication is that the leaders have to establish priorities and allocate resources accordingly as there is always a conflict in this area (Suhonen et al., 2018). Some of the most common conflicting aspects include patients, resources, and the workforce. In addition, various practices may also lead to conflicts such as reduction of education benefits, utilizing unlicensed assisting personnel, and mandatory overtime. The purpose of this paper is to explore the competing needs within the organization. Therefore various aspects will be explored, including a description of the competing needs, relevant policy in the organization, and a recommendation for a policy or practice change.
The Competing Needs
As earlier indicated, the organization’s major problem is nurse burnout, hence the need to use appropriate strategies to address the same and improve outcomes. However, there are various competing needs. Among the competing needs are the need to have competent experts to offer training to the nurses through self-care workshops, stress management skills, and mindfulness. The organization needs to have a relevant information technology system where the trained skills can be applied. From the analysis, the organization has a limited number of skilled individuals who can offer the required staff training on burnout (Chaghari et al., 2017). Therefore, such an inadequacy may derail the nurses’ efforts to teach the nurses about various aspects of controlling burnout.
The situation indicates two different competing needs; getting more experts to retrain the nurses and the acquisition of the right information technology system that can enable the nurses to smoothly perform various tasks for better output. The information technology system is important, but it can also be a complex endeavor as it may need an integration of various interfaces for data sharing (Fukada, 2018). Therefore, professionals and experts with the necessary skills, competency, and experience may be needed to offer the right quality of care required. The implication is that the organization has to appropriately invest in the acquisition of competent professionals and information technology for better outcomes.
The Relevant Policy or Practice that Can Influence the Issue
Policies and practices can impact various issues such as nurse burnout and the implementation of various strategies to address them. Therefore, one of the policies or practices that can influence is the organization’s requirement that staff attends compulsory professional training and development on a regular basis. The organization may also direct that the nurses attend various organized conferences and workshops that cover common care setting issues such as nurse competency and nurse burnout (Chaghari et al., 2017). The implication is that the nursing staff would have to attend regular training sessions to improve their skills, offer the right levels of care, and eliminate the possible effects of nurse burnout.
The organization, therefore, has a policy that prompts the staff to undertake regular professional development training, conferences, and workshops. It is worth noting that such a policy ensures that the nursing staff at the organization participate in the training to improve their skills and reduce the chances of nurse burnout. This training offers the nurses an opportunity to undertake relevant and regular professional development and to widen and improve their knowledge hence the relevant skills needed in the patient care setting.
The Ethical Consideration and the Policy
From the earlier discussion, the policy supports the nurse’s professional growth and development by allowing for training opportunities. From an ethical point of view, the nurses are expected to adhere to the relevant codes of ethics and professional standards. One of such standards is the need to constantly improve competency and skills through relevant training. The policy also expects the nursing force within the facility to undertake continuing professional development. As such, the policy is instrumental in formulating a working culture where every staff is offered an equal opportunity for advancing their knowledge and skills, hence an enabling environment (Billings & Halstead, 2019). Again from the ethical requirements, the staff is expected to possess the necessary skills so that they be in a position to offer high-quality care as required by the professional standards. Besides, the healthcare organization is also expected to take part in promoting the best practices and contribute to the staff knowledge base by offering training and development initiatives.
Among the advantages of this policy is that every staff is presented with an equal opportunity to improve their care competencies and skills. Therefore, the policy creates a strong working relationship among the staff as they seek to make better their skills and competencies to offer the relevant patient care in the care setting. Through this policy, the organization has addressed various possibilities that could permit the provision of low-quality care since every staff is offered an equal opportunity to improve skills and competencies hence better equipped to address issues such as nurse burnout.
Taking part in organized training and professional development has been connected to better care environment outcomes such as lower cases of nurse burnout, which leads to lower cases of nursing staff turnover, improved morale and motivation, and improved productivity (Billings & Halstead, 2019). At the moment, no ethical issues have been noted regarding the policy as it only requires the nursing staff to attend or take part in professional development by attending workshops, training, and conferences on the care setting issues such as nurse burnout.
The Policy or Practice Changes for Balancing the Competing Needs
Competing needs should be well balanced if an organization is to succeed in achieving goals. Therefore, there is a need to explore a policy that limits sharing the patient, staff, and the organization’s information and data when the information technology is implemented. From the ethical perspective, organizations are expected to follow the privacy rules so that the use of information technology systems does not violate any person’s rights (Billings & Halstead, 2019). There is a need to put in place the policies dealing with security and confidentiality of the information to be shared in the system to be implemented as it is a requirement that organizations safeguard any private information. For example, HIPAA laws have been in force for some time now and help in protecting a patient’s private and confidential information. The implication is that, to abide by the HIPAA rules, the organization has to come up with strict internal rules that safeguard private and confidential information. Aspects such as the kind of data to be protected and who should be given permission to access the protected data should clearly be stated and the consequences of failure to abide by the rules outlined.
Conclusion
Nurse burnout is a common phenomenon in the care setting yet has devastating impacts. Nurse burnout is a leading hindrance due to its devastating effects on nurses’ physical, mental, and emotional health. From a health perspective, nurse burnout is manifested by a significant decline in nurses’ energy. Defining elements include emotional exhaustion, reduced motivation, and getting frustrated easily. In solving the problem, an organization may have to deal with competing needs for better outcomes. Therefore, this latest write-up has focused on various aspects of competing needs.
References
Billings, D. M., & Halstead, J. A. (2019). Teaching in nursing e-book: A Guide for Faculty. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Chaghari, M., Saffari, M., Ebadi, A., & Ameryoun, A. (2017). Empowering education: A new model for in-service training of nursing staff. Journal of advances in medical education & professionalism, 5(1), 26. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5238493/
Fukada M. (2018). Nursing Competency: Definition, Structure, and Development. Yonago Acta Medica, 61(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.33160/yam.2018.03.001.
Suhonen, R., Stolt, M., Habermann, M., Hjaltadottir, I., Vryonides, S., Tonnessen, S., … & Scott, P. A. (2018). Ethical elements in priority setting in nursing care: A scoping review. International journal of nursing studies, 88, 25-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2018.08.006