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.

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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.

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Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues

Quite often, nurse leaders are faced with ethical dilemmas, such as those associated with choices between competing needs and limited resources. Resources are finite, and competition for those resources occurs daily in all organizations.

For example, the use of 12-hour shifts has been a strategy to retain nurses. However, evidence suggests that as nurses work more hours in a shift, they commit more errors. How do effective leaders find a balance between the needs of the organization and the needs of ensuring quality, effective, and safe patient care?

In this Discussion, you will reflect on a national healthcare issue and examine how competing needs may impact the development of polices to address that issue.

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To Prepare:

• Review the Resources and think about the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously selected for study in Module 1.
• Reflect on the competing needs in healthcare delivery as they pertain to the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously examined.

By Day 3 of Week 3

Post an explanation of how competing needs, such as the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients, may impact the development of policy. Then, describe any specific competing needs that may impact the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected. What are the impacts, and how might policy address these competing needs? Be specific and provide examples.

SAMPLE SOLUTION

Competing Needs to Nursing Shortage

As witnessed by many hospitals, the heavy workload of hospital nurses is a major issue for the healthcare sector. Despite the recommendations put forth by the Institute of Medicine to reduce the high deficit of nurses, the concern is far from over. Many competing interests have to be balanced in a bid to solve these competing needs. Nurses’ moral and ethical call to always deliver quality care is always in conflict with unsatisfactory working conditions. Nurses feel that a lot is expected from them even in instances when they are overwhelmed with responsibility (Marć et al., 2019). For example, when a nurse causes a medical error, quality healthcare advocates are likely to reprimand the nurse involved without looking at the circumstances under which the error occurred. For instance, how are the working shifts for the nurse? Are they flexible to allow delivery of quality care?

Additionally, the need for quality care is always in conflict with nurses’ call for better wages. With the increase in population and the lack of commensurate employment, more nurses question quality care in greater jeopardy. Therefore, most nurses feel that a lot is expected of them, yet little is done to reciprocate their healthcare delivery efforts. Most of the nurses, therefore, feel too pressured, weighed down, and discouraged. The only option is to leave the nursing profession against the continued lack of recruitment for new nurses. 

A policy that may influence the selected healthcare Issue

There are many practices and policies that our organization has put in place to solve the nursing shortage issue. One such practice is allowing flexibility in the schedule of nurses. Flexibility allows nurses to balance their work and home life and advance in their educational endeavors. Additionally, the flexibility allows decompressing of the rather stressful and emotionally draining shifts. When nurses are happy about the schedules, a more positive work atmosphere will be likely, and the hospital will retain quality nurses. ANA has also suggested that flexible working schedules are also a strategy through which an organization can attract and retain quality health care staff who are likely to bring more value to the healthcare organization. According to ANA, staff shortages are coming when hospitals that have flexible work schedules…