CHALLENGES OF HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS
The hospital staff includes a great number of health care professionals such as physicians, registered nurses, advanced-practice nurses and other health care givers while the hospital administrators such as chief executive officers and chief nurse officers whose main role is to ensure that the hospital is always running smoothly and create strategic plans for the improvement of the facilities and systems care and oversee the relocation of funds. Health care systems has recently been facing a lot of problems with respect to the shortage of reliable qualified staff and the services been offered in our medical units. With the increasing number of patients in our medical facility and the lack of staff the nursing practice, health care procedures and hospital capacity has been negatively affected while the hospital aim to improve health care services has been greatly derailed (Sutton, 1977).
The insufficient supply of the medical personnel is major problem in the medical facilities. The shortage of staff is mostly due to the low wages, stressful working environment, rising demand and demographic changes that does not favor most staff. Staffing adjustments should be made in every department so as to be in the ration as the workload. This is to mean that if the work load is more the number of staff ought to be increased and if the staff. The staff must be qualified professionals for any facility to be operational. Since all departments are sensitive to changes, it is important that a census is done regularly to see the flexibility of each department. For instance, it is important to note if our facilities bed count increase the number of nurses, nursing assistants, housekeeping staff and lab technicians will also need to increase. But the most important thing is to ensure that this is in alignment with our operating cost as a facility (Vincent, 2010).
The lack of staffing impacts the care delivery processes. It causes for instance delayed nurse response to pages or calls, decreased staff communication and the physician workload. This also causes delayed discharge of patients from the wards and increased wait time for surgery or tests. The patient care programs are closed or discontinued. The quality of health care given to patients is also low since nurses are unable to detect complications of patients in time thus ultimately affect the ability of nurses to maintain the patients’ safety. Quality of health care services offered according to the Institute of medicine (IOM) should be patient-centered, effective, safe, timely efficient and equitable and these is greatly affected since medical practitioners have large work load thus reducing their effectiveness. Patients also wait long extra hours to receive treatment (Vincent, 2010).
In order to improve on these problems of staffing and quality health care teamwork and collaboration is key. There should be inter-professional collaboration since it ultimately affects teamwork and in turn patient satisfaction and health provider satisfaction. This is to mean that when it comes to primary healthcare professionals such as family physician, physiotherapist, dentists that serve same patient should have frequent communication and work as a functioning team. This will improve the health care providence process thus increasing the quality of health care. It is the duty and objective of health facility to offer to give quality health care and this can only happen if health professionals are committed to their duties and responsibilities and also monitor the performance of their colleagues (McWay, 2014).
Effective team work efforts will help to improve patient outcomes and cohesion, competency and stability of the facility. A good team work will help the hospital staff to have faith in their ability to solve problems and other major medical emergencies thus being positive minded toward their different tasks and duties in the facility. Working as a team and constant communication between the primary staff, secondary staff and the management of this facility will help in reducing the medical errors that might occur due to poor communication between departments, patient care will be of quality, the work load issue can be solved since there can be a good fair working schedule and a smooth transition especially during shift change, build cohesion and finally help to reduce the healthcare professionals’ burnout. In order to have a good working team it is important that all affected parties know their role. This means that the healthcare providers should know their roles, improve the communication with the patients, improve coordination of health care services and make sure that the health resources and equipment are used effectively (McWay, 2014).
One way to foster inclusion and collaboration teamwork is by changing the hierarchical nature of health care. This is to mean it is important to curb the professional turf that exists between the different medical practitioners since it incapacitates teamwork. This is to mean that it is important that all members of the facilities staff to understand their roles and the roles of their colleagues and to respect the work they do because we all have a common goal and that is providing good healthcare to the patients. By so doing working towards the goal of better health care will be easier. It is also advisable that all care givers should explain the role of the different members to the patients. This will enable smooth workflow from one department to another especially when it comes to patients transfer. Collaborative care means we are all liable when it comes to ensuring patient safety. It is therefore important that the leadership respect and value the work done by each individual and work toward building rust between the members (Lemieux-Charles & McGuire, 2006).
Having a reliable policy agenda is also key when it comes to improving the collaborative efforts. In a given health care system there are many stake holders involved and it is important that the policy of each all work parallel to provincial governments health policies. Since we are governed by the facility policies, there will be constant evaluation of the work we are doing, and the measurement of the outcomes of our different departments. Lack of or low outcomes will guarantee suspensions of the responsible parties. Patient safety, waiting lists which are governed by the policy should be followed directly (Lemieux-Charles & McGuire, 2006).
In conclusion, since the problem of understaffed medical practitioners might not be prevented, interdisciplinary team work will greatly help in improving quality of health care and create safe environment for both the patients and staff in general. It is important that nurses, physicians, allied health and health care management have inter-professional competencies when it comes to offering quality health. The work load of the staff should be regulated all of them having different shifts so as to reduce the workload per staff and thus increase their effectiveness, with regards to offering health care to mall the patients it is important that all of us work toward the stipulated Institute of Medicine six aims for high quality health care that is: patient-centered, effective, safe, timely efficient and equitable. All these will enable us to reach the goal of good health care for our society.
References
Sutton, S. (1977). Nursing mirror., Eng.: IPC Specialist and Professional Press.
McWay, D. C. (2014). Today's health information management: An integrated approach. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar/Cengage Learning.
Vincent, C. (2010). Patient safety. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Lemieux-Charles, L. & McGuire, W.L. (2006). "What Do We Know about Healthcare Team Effectiveness? A Review of the Literature." Medical Care Research and Review 63.
