NURS 6052 Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

NURS 6052 Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

NURS 6052 Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

Healthcare policies and procedures help provide standardization and clarity in addressing challenges as well as activities that are crucial for health and safety, legal liabilities, and regulatory needs within every day clinical practice. Two competing needs that affect organizational nursing shortage are workforce satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Healthcare institutions are mostly fixated on patient satisfaction and at times fail to acknowledge the set workforce that provides care to the clients. When the workforce feels unmotivated through aspects such as lack of recognition by the management, then this reflects the probability of provision of low-quality healthcare that leads to patients’ dissatisfaction (Anand & Dwivedi, 2019). When patients are not satisfied, the management may opt to relieve some workers of their duties, others may also leave due to dissatisfaction, and this increases nursing shortage within the organization. The purpose of this paper is to examine relevant policies that may be used in addressing the two competing needs that are related to the issue of nursing shortage as a stressor.

Findings show that religious engagement among students declines during college, but their spirituality shows substantial growth. “Students become more caring, more tolerant, more connected with others, and more actively engaged in a spiritual quest.” (“Cultivating the Spirit – Spirituality in Higher Education”) The authors also found that spiritual growth enhances other outcomes, such as academic performance, psychological well-being, leadership development, and satisfaction with college. The study also identified a number of college activities that contribute to students’ spiritual growth. Some of these–study abroad, interdisciplinary studies, and service learning–appear to be effective because they expose students to new and diverse people, cultures, and ideas. Spiritual development is also enhanced if students engage in “inner work” through activities such as meditation or self-reflection, or if their professors actively encourage them to explore questions of meaning and purpose. (“Cultivating the Spirit – Spirituality in Higher (Alexander W, 2010)”). By raising public awareness of the key role that spirituality plays in student learning and development, by alerting academic administrators, faculty, and curriculum committees to the importance of spiritual development, and by identifying strategies for enhancing that development, this work encourages institutions to give greater priority to these spiritual aspects of students’ educational and professional development.

Relevant Organizational Policy or Practice Impacting Nursing Shortage

Healthcare organizations are required to be innovative in attaining the needs of the workforce, while at the same time ensuring the provision of safe and quality care to the patients. An effective practice to address the issue of nursing shortage as adopted by my organization is the use of the Magnet Certification for assessing the effectiveness and quality of nursing within it (Haddad & Toney-Butler, 2020). My organization can use the policy to remove issues related to competition between the needs of the nurses and patients’ satisfaction (Rodriguez-Garcia et al., 2020). This is because the policy encompasses involvement of nurses in decision-making processes for effective clinical outcomes as well as effective grievance resolution measures. This in turn ensures nurses’ job satisfaction with low rates of turnovers as well as their delivery of top patient outcomes

Ethical Concerns of Magnet Certification

The Magnet Recognition Program for adoption by the organization has sound ethical considerations, and no noteworthy ethical concerns or challenges. The strength of the policy in promoting ethics is founded on the rigorous approach that involves several months of evaluations for evidence of excellence in terms of nurse satisfaction, patient satisfaction, and care outcomes within the given institution (Haller et al.). The documentation strategy for the Magnet Certification Strategy involves transformational leadership, structural empowerment, exemplary professional practice, and new knowledge, innovation as well as enhancements. This is done for purposes of compliance of certification together with ethical considerations
Magnet Program certification necessitates the need for describing the healthcare institution, practice settings for the nurses, and undertakings for upholding patient-centered care, sound ethical considerations, continued EBP research projects, and the Chief Nursing Officer’s (CNO) work description as well as their resume. The aspect of ethics is incorporated within various courses in the program that necessitates addressing social conducts via continued educational research on core cultural behaviors. Every year, mandatory, updated computer-tests are carried out on social conduct alongside ethical content and education is given by leaders to the clinical staff who fail to attain competent scores (Van Bogaert et al., 2018). The program’s robustness in engagement and commitment of the clinical staff in inspiring excellent patient outcomes within every day interdisciplinary practice is overseen through clear frameworks, methodologies as well as resources upheld by governance and policy contexts that attains visible and accountable outcomes.

Recommendation of Policy or Practice Changes for Addressing Competing Needs of Resources, Workers, and Patients

A practice change may be fixated on a change of governance for transparency, accountability, and putting in place effective mechanisms for tackling the challenges. These may include the need for the conflicts arising from the competing needs to be encompassed as a key item within the agendas of relevant committees. This is then followed by making reports on the set needs for attaining the desired outcomes (Harris et al., 2017). There should also be the aspect of quality improvement initiatives within decision-making structures for ensuring a process of review for pinpointing where the issues lie and coming up with effective strategies for addressing them.
Ethical shortcomings that can be tackled within the present policies include autonomy that necessitates for patients to be involved in the decision-making process of healthcare that they receive. Another ethical concern is nonmaleficence that aids in the evaluation of probable harms within the existing clinical systems. The principle of beneficence can also be addressed to ensure the attainment of the objectives of offering as well as inspiring positivity in the realization of the best healthcare outcomes and satisfaction (Ramsom & Olsson, 2017). The ethical consideration of justice can be fulfilled by ensuring a full analysis of the limits of the available healthcare resources within the set healthcare organization.

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Conclusion

Policies within healthcare are crucial as they help devise the overall plans of action utilized in leading required results, and are also key for helping in decision-making. They help create clear communication to the workforce the intended outcomes within the institution. The healthcare personnel is in turn able to comprehend their set roles combined with responsibilities within the settings. They help set the foundation for the provision of safe, and cost-effective care to patients.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I agree, the nursing shortage is a an extremely important issue that needs resolution. I had not heard of nursing students being given temporary licenses to work prior to reading your post. According to the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency, an executive order was placed in March of 2020 allowing for out-of-state practitioners, retired healthcare professionals, recent graduates, and graduate pharmacists to practice under temporary licenses (Indiana Professional Licensing Agency, n.d.). I suppose, desperate times calls for desperate measures and during the pandemic, this was the case. With so many factors effecting the need of nursing professionals, the problem is sure to persist. Many issues continue to influence the need for healthcare providers such as, cost-containment pressures, hospital consolidation, reduction in inpatient hospitalization, increased acuity of hospital patients, and a shift in outpatient care from hospitals to ambulatory and community-based settings (Peterson, 2001). How do you think we as healthcare providers can contribute to promoting the healthcare profession and helping in times of shortage?

References:

Indiana Professional Licensing Agency. (n.d.). COVID-19 Temporary Healthcare Provider Registry. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.in.gov/pla/covid-19-temporary-healthcare-provider-registry/

Peterson, C. P. (2001). Nursing Shortage: Not a Simple Problem – No Easy Answers. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 6(1). Retrieved from https://ojin.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Volume62001/No1Jan01/ShortageProblemAnswers.html

Assignment: 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.

By Day 7 of Week 3

Submit your revised paper.

Cost of medication determines whether the patients will be willing to seek healthcare services from an institution or not. The goal of the quadruple Aim is to reduce the cost of education and increase the access to healthcare services by the population. The cost of medication depends on various factors including the changing economic times and the need to increase the number of healthcare providers in an organization. From the business perspective, institutions operate with the aim of making profits. Therefore, in the call for improving the quality of the healthcare services the patients receive, the healthcare institutions may require to increase their staffs and other equipment necessary for efficient operations. Addition of the resources result in the increased cost which must be transferred to the patients who are the consumers. Therefore, the current study explores the conflicting perspective of the mandatory overtime as a way of meeting the needs of the patients without increasing the cost of medication.

Competing Needs

The increasing number of patients in the healthcare institution requires an additional human resource. However, conventionally, the ratio of healthcare providers to the patients have remained low because of the limited resources. Healthcare providers are forced to attend to many patients beyond the standard requirements. Alternatively, the healthcare institution may opt to recruit more staff and this will result in additional costs which may be transferred to what patients pay. Some leaders may opt make full of their current staffing in responding to the rising costs and change in the payment policies by the federal government.

The introduction of the pay-for-value compensation method meant that healthcare institution would improve the quality of healthcare services to the patients (Kominski et al., 2017). Besides, the policy aimed at eliminating all the unnecessary health interventions that could otherwise increase the cost of medication. Furthermore, the hospital institutions are forced to utilize their existing staff accordingly to improve both the quality of care and minimize the treatment costs. Nurses and other healthcare providers may be forced to work for long hours since they have to spend lots of time understanding the need of their patients to meet the quality threshold (Bernstrøm et al., 2019). On the other hand, the increasing number of patients also force them to work overtime. Therefore, the need to lower the cost of medication and at the same time maintain the quality.

Relevant Policy Practice

The healthcare organization introduced the mandatory overtime as a way of dealing with increasing demand for the quality healthcare services as well as maintain the cost low. Eliminating the mandatory overtime means that the institution may have to employ more staff and this will result in additional cost of medication. The nursing staffs are expected to work for about 2 hours extra per day to meet the demand for healthcare delivery. The policy was introduced after recognizing that the nurses and clinicians spent little time with the patients and so did not identify all their needs. As a result, the healthcare providers were required to spend enough time and so they would have to work overtime depending on the patients’ flow. Therefore, all the employees recruited in the organization were made aware of the mandatory overtime requirement whenever requested.

Critique of the Policy

The policy was developed to respond to the need to improve the quality of healthcare services to the patients. The introduction of the pay-for-performance means that the healthcare institutions would be compensated based on the patients outcome and not the services offered. As a result, the institution had to develop an approach of responding to the need without increasing the costs of medication to the patients. Nurses and clinicians would spend more time with their patients and understand all understand the underlying factors that could impact their treatment outcomes and this would lead to better outcomes.

However, exposing the healthcare providers to long-working hours could leads to injuries and emotional exhaustion. Studies have indicated that burnout among the employees in healthcare sector is attributed to the long working hours (Kowalczuk et al., 2020). It is ethically wrong to expose the healthcare providers to health risks with the intention of reducing the medication costs (Moon et al., 2020). The quadruple Aim advocate for both the better outcomes for the patients and improved quality of life for the healthcare providers. Mandatory overtime for the healthcare providers does not improve their quality of life but instead increases their risk of developing burnout.

Furthermore, studies show that fatigued employees are prone of making errors and this means that the patients could suffer more from the medication errors (Salen & Norman, 2018). The policy in the institution is only suitable for short-term goal but destructive in the long-run. All healthcare providers must be treated with dignity and be given enough time for rest. Therefore, while the goal of the policy was to address the issue of rising costs, it could increase the costs because of the frequent recruitment requirement due to high employees’ turnover in the organization. High turnover rates could compromise the quality of the healthcare delivery to the patients farther.

Recommendation

The healthcare organization can use other policies to improve the quality of healthcare services in the organization other than the mandatory overtime. The healthcare institution can introduce the electronic health system that will allow the healthcare providers to interact with their patients virtually and so reduce their need to go to the hospitals. The electronic health system will increase interaction between the healthcare providers and their patients as well as improve the level of patients’ commitment in managing their health (Sprivulis, 2020). Eventually, the pressure to attend to many patients in the hospital will reduce as the quality of treatment improves. In addition, the cost of medication ill improve significantly (Sanyal et al., 2018).

The healthcare providers will work with the community health volunteers in offering the healthcare services to the patients at home. The policy will promote better treatment outcomes which will improve the quality of life for the healthcare providers. Furthermore, the healthcare providers will be motivated to offer their best in interacting with the patients.

Conclusion

The rising cost of medication following the Medicaid and Medicare programs present a significant challenge to the healthcare delivery process. The introduction of pay-for-value compensation aimed at making the medication costs affordable. However, the increase in the number of patients seeking healthcare services exerts a significant pressure on the limited number of healthcare staff. The introduction of the mandatory overtime is one of the ways of ensuring the healthcare providers offer quality services to all patients. However, the policy presents more harm to the healthcare providers’ health. The electronic health systems can be deployed by healthcare institutions to minimize the need for the patients to visit the hospital and improve the treatment outcomes.

References

Bernstrøm, V. H., Alves, D. E., Ellingsen, D., & Ingelsrud, M. H. (2019). Healthy working time arrangements for healthcare personnel and patients: A systematic literature review. BMC Health Services Research, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-019-3993-5

Kominski, G. F., Nonzee, N. J., & Sorensen, A. (2017). The Affordable Care Act’s impacts on access to insurance and health care for low-income populations. Annual Review of Public Health, 38(1), 489-505. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031816-044555

Kowalczuk, K., Krajewska-Kułak, E., & Sobolewski, M. (2020). Working excessively and burnout among nurses in the context of sick leaves. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00285

Moon, S., Mariat, S., Kamae, I., & Pedersen, H. B. (2020). Defining the concept of fair pricing for medicines. BMJ, l4726. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l4726

Salen, P., & Norman, K. (2018). The impact of fatigue on medical error and clinician wellness: A vignette-based discussion. Vignettes in Patient Safety – Volume 2. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.70712

Sanyal, C., Stolee, P., Juzwishin, D., & Husereau, D. (2018). Economic evaluations of eHealth technologies: A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 13(6), e0198112. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198112

Sprivulis, P. (2020). Connecting health care through information technology. Patient Safety First, 299-317. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003116677-14