Healthcare Organizations Analysis

Introduction

Nurses are a critical component in the ensuring optimum healthcare is accorded to patients. Towards this end, the capacity to avail the best possible level of care to clients, it is imperative that nurses work within environments that respect and value the profession by offering adequate resources (Nelson, Batalden & Nelson, 2007). Health care organizations are tasked with attaining such goals. One which they emerge as magnet institutions where staff offer excellent patient care outcomes, experience high degree of job satisfaction, minimal nursing professionals turnover rates as well as desired grievance solutions. For any organization, achieving these objectives is a stringent undertaking.

Given the numerous parameters occurring in healthcare organizations, one can only perceive them as complex systems that ought to adapt and continuously undergo transformations since numerous subsystems exist within them (Nelson, Batalden & Nelson, 2007). This paper seeks to present a detailed organizational analysis of Summerlin Hospital which is in effect a subsystem of an entity referred to as Universal Health Services.

Healthcare Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems Encountering Transformation Challenges

The present state of affairs in society has by far evolved to what the aristocratic class of the 1920’s could fathom. In some ways, things have become simple for man but extremely complex and dynamic within organizations. This is founded on the fact that people today have more information available to them while organizations are seeking to ensure best relationships with community members (Nelson, Batalden & Nelson, 2007). Healthcare organizations have become the most complex entity stemming from developments that have placed them at the center of ensuring quality of life not only at the individual level but also at the community level. For instance, contemporary healthcare organizations have call centers, ambulatory services, emergency departments, community outreach services, and many more which all have to work at optimized levels in an effort to achieve the objectives of qualified service to communities. These are essentially subsystems within a larger healthcare organization. The failure in a subsystem shadows progress registered in others and by extension, the community’s perceptions on its value to a progressive development in overall quality of life. This implies that healthcare organizations are in many cases subjected to chaos. As Wheatley (1993) provides, organizations are in essence living systems that have to embrace transformations in times of uncertainty to not only fight off objections to change but also seek order towards transformative change that ensures survival. Organizations in the healthcare industry therefore have to engage in micromanagement of the numerous subsystems within in an effort to find order from chaos. This can only come from information gathered in moments of chaos that facilitates self-organization that champions over confusion, frustrations and overwhelming influences of chaos. In the early 20^th Century, information was indeed, power but in the 21^st Century, information is a critical enabler for organizations to creatively engage in transformations towards executing core mandate to the society from which they derive existence.

Summerlin Hospital

This healthcare institution vision centers on the delivery of qualified care with a focus on ensuring the patient needs come first. Towards this end, it attracts compassionate and well trained medical professionals needed to incorporate use of latest equipment within diagnostic facilities (Summerlin Hospital Medical Center, 2016). Its mission is towards optimized healthcare delivery not only through curative medicine but also via preventive health education towards appraising the community’s overall health status.

The nursing departments within this institutions is a critical subsystem whose vision looks to ensuring qualified nursing care that promotes health with the aim of truly benefiting the community. To achieve such objectives, the departments is reliant on committed, dedicated and competent staff sensitive to the spiritual, cultural, mental, emotional and physical well-being of each client. The department’s mission is community oriented (Summerlin Hospital Medical Center, 2016). It acknowledges that its vision is only attainable through the establishment of a diversely specialized and dedicated nursing stiff that exhibits a propensity to utilize medical nursing technology towards executing a holistic patient care approach. Each nursing professional is committed to personal responsibility as well as liability in ensuring privilege communication and confidentiality of information in line with prescribed nursing care standards. As a subsystem that seeks to continuously ensure that Summerlin Hospital meets its community’s healthcare requirements; its core purpose is firmly established towards quality healthcare services provision. The outcomes has been a continued increase in the number of consumers opting to gain care services offered by the organization and by extension, recommend it to family and friends.

The Organization’s Culture and Predominant Leadership Style

Edgar Schein posits that there are three echelons of culture which include the visible, unconscious and espoused values and beliefs (Thomas, 2014). The nursing department at Summerlin Hospital projects a subculture that is essentially in alignment with the institution’s overall culture. Indeed, it appears to have one that supersedes objectives envisions by the healthcare provision entity.  Through its Chief Nursing Officer, the department is committed to professional development of members, optimized care outcomes and visionary leadership. In an effort to ensure all members cope accordingly to external as well as internal pressures, the CNO employs an open door policy for managers as well as nursing staff towards continually fostering a sense of cohesive community in addressing issues facing the department (Engebretson & Hickey, 2015). The operating climate within the nursing department is one that is supportive towards boldly solving emerging issues and more so, integrating innovation aimed at meeting obligations through measurable outcomes. As with any other department within Summerlin Hospital, the nursing department experiences a myriad of behaviors, fears and attitudes projected by staff as a result of diverse reasons. The CNO consistently encourages engagements at all levels especially in processes of committing to a change process for the achievement of desired transformations. The CNO remain at the fore of engaging staff at all levels of the department to reach for self-actualization as nursing professionals through specialized education and certification.

The department therefore appreciates a culture of learning as exhibit through continuous employee assessments that look to measure satisfaction at an individual level as well as with regard to the working environment (Smith, 2001). The aim of the surveys used for employee assessment is towards upholding desired retention levels and transforming the environment towards a more family oriented atmosphere that in turn appraises teamwork capabilities and outcomes. More importantly, the department also reviews quality of care patients attained at Summerlin hospital. Nursing staffs are offered with communication based on information gathered from such reviews in a non-confrontational manner and through informal as well as formal channels. This is because such information is appreciated as excellent opportunities for organizational learning.

The nursing departments have in the past few years thrived on the CNO’s adopted leadership style which is essentially transformative (Smith, 2001). This has worked well to appraise the degree of professionalism amongst individual members. For instance, the CNO worked to ensure that all staff members subscribe to more than one professional nursing organization without the need for incentives. This has not only supported the CNO’s objective to ensure staffs continue with education towards attaining expert accreditation.

Level of Greatness

As Collins (2001) provides, the progression of an organization’s status to one which service is distinguishable relative to sustained excellence is pegged on strategy and execution. The CNO has been at the fore of executing recommendations as suggested through amounts of information derived from patient feedback as well as employee reviews. The information derived at times exposes bitter truths which the CNO fully comprehends that confrontational action cannot solve. By continuously advocating for a family oriented environment within the department, the nursing staffs are openly able voice concerns as well as share information on the problems perceived as curtailing the quest for efficient and qualified care to patients. In this way, staffs have come to embrace their passions as patient centered with teamwork as the best means for achieving desired objectives while shared values towards optimized care outcomes serve as the economic engine (Collins, 2001). These have been the basis for the CNO’s quest to ensure the nursing department progresses from a good department to one which is associated with greatness. Bitter truths initially attempt to slow down the momentum gain similar to the flywheel concept. However, the CNO in collaboration with administrative teams isolate problematic issues towards ensuring the department is not overwhelmed with a particular situation. Solutions to the bitter truth are communicated via strategy that allows the department to absorb the bitter truth and aligning all members to focus on better care outcomes in the wake of the bitter truth with minimal friction towards achieving maximized momentum.

Change Process Approach

Relative to Lewin’s Change Theory, the nursing department progressed through its unfreezing stage which involved positively compelling members to ensure association with more than a single professional nursing organization (Roussel, 2014). Towards this end, such membership has also served to encouraged nurses in the department to pursue further education in favor for expert certification. The outcome has been a more liberating perception on desired behaviors, feelings and thoughts among individual staff towards better understanding on the need for organizational development through organizational learning. At present, the department is in the refreezing phase towards ensuring that all nurses in the departments are encouraged to gain expert accreditation and membership with multiple professional nursing organizations towards the delivery of optimized patient care (Engebretson & Hickey, 2015). The future of the nursing department is bent on ensuring the work place environment favors members to execute their professional mandate and acquire the loyal appreciation of clients and by extension, the organization and hospital.

Conclusion

Summerlin Hospital as a progressive institution dependent on the immediate community for its growth is keen on ensuring all patients report positive outcomes. The nursing departments as an integral subsystem of the organization abides by a culture that is a notch higher than that of the organization. The outcome has been attracting a leader who through a transformative approach as motivated other members to embrace organizational learning. By encouraging members to align to professionalism by subscribing to organizational bodies, the nurses have sought to accrue better professional accreditation. This has not only enabled the organization to positively encounter bitter truths but has also ensured it strategically shared new information towards better retention outcomes and maximized health status benefits to the community.

References

Collins, J. C. (2001).  Good to great.  New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers.

Engebretson, J. C., & Hickey, J. V. (2015).  Complexity science and complex adaptive systems.  In Butts & Rich (Eds.), Philosophies and theories for advanced practice nursing (pp 111-135).  Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett

Nelson, E. C., Batalden, P. B., & Godfrey, M. M. (2007). Quality by design: A clinical microsystems approach. San Francisco, CA: Josey-Bass.

Roussel, L. (2014). The nature of the evidence: Microsystems, macrosystems, and mesosystems.  In Hall, & Roussel (Eds.), Evidenced-based practice: An integrative approach to research, administration, and practice (pp.172-184). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

Smith, M. K. (2001). Peter Senge and the learning organization. Retrieved from http://infed.org/mobi/peter-senge-and-the-learning-organization/

Summerlin Hospital Medical Center. (2016). About the hospital. Summerlin Hospital Medical Center. Retrieved from https://www.summerlinhospital.com/about

Thomas, P. (2014). Evaluating organizational frameworks for systems change. In Hall, & Roussel (Eds.), Evidenced-based practice: An integrative approach to research, administration, and practice (pp.149-170). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

Wheatley, M. J. (1993). Chaos and complexity: what can science teach? OD Practitioner.

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