Organizational Culture, Leadership and Change (Essay Sample)

Organizational Culture, Leadership and Change Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Course Professor Date Organizational Culture, Leadership and Change Organizational culture, leadership, and change are crucial to delivering safe and quality healthcare. Positive workplace culture bolsters nurse-patient relationships, improving nursing and patient outcomes. Also, effective leadership involves using personal connections and experiences to motivate and inspire workers toward achieving specific care goals. For instance, an effective manager must portray various leadership qualities, including emotional intelligence, critical thinking, support for mentorship, professionalism, exceptional communication skills, and dedication to excellence. Similarly, the change allows nurses to adapt to their organization's and client's present needs. While workers can often resist change, involving the workforce in the plans to introduce change can help a workforce to adjust to new systems with minimal resistance. Because delivering safe and quality care is a priority for most healthcare facilities, hospitals need to align their culture, leadership, and change with the goals of building sustainable businesses while improving patient and nursing outcomes. A Brief Description of My Organization Currently, I am working at Urgent Care for Kids (UCK) in Woodlands, Texas. This is a for-profit organization offering various in-center services, including emergency pediatric care, school-Med, virtual care for families, and remote testing. We have numerous branches in three cities: Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Our team of specialists treat common illnesses, allergic reactions, and conduct laceration repairs. More importantly, my organization has short wait times, hires professionals to ensure the delivery of quality care, welcomes walk-in clients, accepts payment through most insurance plans, and collaborates with the patients’ primary pediatrician to ensure continuity of care. Also, our unique attributes include offering affordable care, working with friendly and competent child specialists, creating a comfortable and playful environment for patients, staying open at night, on weekends, and holidays, and incentivizing each visit with our rubber duck of the month. The hospital aims to expand access to quality child care for all vulnerable patients across the globe. Truly, it will achieve this goal through strategic management and visionary leadership. Evaluating the Culture of Northgate Hospital UCK thrives on a clan culture, which promotes staff collaboration and the growth of a family-like workplace environment that values integrity, commitment, participation, and loyalty. Additionally, research established that clan culture promotes open communication among employees, leading to the efficient execution of tasks (Hitt et al., 2018). That is, my organization utilizes all employee input and ideas to improve its services. Nonetheless, this culture is still developing since the entire workforce is yet to embrace it. More importantly, it is still developing because of how my nurse supervisor treats other employees and the company's relatively small size. My first impression of the hospital was not good. The facility was relatively small and structurally unappealing. Consequently, I was apprehensive that I had made an erroneous decision to leave my former employer, the Texas Children’s Hospital. A famous firm with a good reputation for offering reliable pediatric care. On my first week of joining UCK, I was partnered with a two-year veteran nurse. She scolded pediatricians in front of customers. Also, she tried to micro-manage and change my approach to conducting laceration repairs until the management informed her that I had seven years of experience performing tissue adhesives and applying simple, running, and half-buried sutures. When the nurse learned about my suturing history, she became reticent in employee interactions and preferred to "observe" rather than onboard me into our unit. Also, I noticed that doctors were not communicating effectively with their patients when starting or ending therapy sessions. Through experience, I learned that in-center pediatric treatment allows professionals and patients to know each other well. For instance, while patients share their happy and sad stories, the doctors focus on empathizing and encouraging them to be optimistic about their health outcomes. However, this was not the case in UCK when I joined it; there was no atmosphere of care or effective connection between caregivers and patients. This practice was detrimental to patients' experiences; thus, it needed to be changed. At the end of my first shift, Regina Bowater M.D, the facility's Quality Assurance manager, requested that I give her my honest first impression of the quality of the hospital services and cohesion in the workforce. I started by explaining to her why I enjoy giving child care and why I often demand genuine care, compassion, teamwork, commitment, integrity, respect, and effective communication from clients and colleagues. Regina inspired me to pursue my nursing leadership career. A few months later, I was joined by Rebekah, a talented pediatrician with whom I had a good working relationship while working for my former employer. We began fostering the clan culture in the organization. After five months of employee training, motivation, and correction, teamwork and staff morale increased significantly. Patients and doctors were eager to connect. Unlike before, when the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) would receive severe criticism frequently, this section is currently ranked among the best-performing departments following a stream of appreciation messages from clients recognizing the exceptional services we offer. Given the success of the clan culture in our unit, Regina requested that we spread it to the entire organization. While more can always be done to improve efficiency at the office, we are proud of our achievements at UCK by embracing the clan culture. Evaluating Regina’s Leadership Style Regina Bowater M.D, UCK’s QA manager, has a transformative leadership style. According to Chapman (2019), a transformative approach to leadership is driven by open-mindedness, integrity, and emotional intelligence to achieve the best results. Regina demonstrated a significant eagerness to learn, grow, and change her mind with humility to ensure positive nursing and patient outcomes. Regina visits our unit daily and helps us when the section is understaffed. Her physical presence motivates workers, inspires patients, and raises her awareness of areas that need improvement. Similarly, Regina's regular visits demonstrate her appreciation for personnel and genuine concern for patients' safety. Regina conducts bi-weekly staff meetings to raise possible patient safety concerns, suggest new approaches to delivering effective care, and create opportunities for quality improvement. She encourages clinicians to discuss their thoughts, problems, and solutions freely. Moreover, she publicly recognizes employees' dedication to delivering quality care through collaboration. More importantly, these sessions highlight weaknesses in the managerial processes and emphasize the growing need for hospitals to deliver quality care. Regina's leadership style also encourages organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), which involves workers' readiness to exceed workplace expectations by voluntarily executing tasks beyond their job description. Individuals conduct OCB without being formally recognized by the firm's official progression structure, yet it leads to effective and enhanced execution of administrative duties and obligations (Aloustani et al., 2020). Therefore, OCB is the outcome of a culture that fosters commitment, dedication, selflessness, and professionalism. Nursing managers must be constantly aware of the consequences of their choices, be fair and transparent in their interactions with employees, and have open communication with clinicians. Alzahrani & Hasan (2019) state that effective leadership increases nursing job satisfaction and improves patient outcomes. Nursing administrators must practice transformational leadership to improve employees' performance, leading to the delivery of safe and quality healthcare services. However, improving performance requires developing and implementing specific methods to rate performance and determine improvement interventions. Gu & Itoh (2017) conducted a study that included eight metrices to assess performance: safety, operational efficiency, quality of professional career, financial efficiency, workforce coaching and mentorship, mortality, staff and client satisfaction, and patient-centered care. Since these performance indicators are applicable in different clinical environments, nurses must recognize their goals and strive to attain them daily to enhance personal performance. In my organization, the management needs to improve its awareness of the hospital's daily operations. For example, the head of operations called our unit, but when no one answered the phone because we were all busy caring for patients, he decided to take disciplinary action against my team for ignoring his call. Because of the management's lack of awareness of how operations in PICU are conducted, we protested. There was a mass resignation in my unit due to the punishment of innocent and hardworking employees. This incident significantly impacted the few remaining nurses' abilities to deliver quality care. A Description of Change that would Improve Performance ...