Correlation between workplace culture and patient outcome in healthcare quality assurance
Quality assurance is an indicator that can be used in any firm and it generally keeps its focus on the material, the quality of the work, and finally the service which is provided by the company. If the service which is provided is not good, then the rate of service provided falls. The quality of the service provided is defined as the degree to which the services of health for a single person as well as the entire population raise the probability of the health outcomes and are equally compatible with the current professional knowledge. The concept of assurance is a statement or manifestation that stimulates and motivates the level of confidence in a person (Gupta & Rokade, 2016). The workplace context which is chosen over here is the workplace culture and performance in team management in the nursing and healthcare department. A great section of this paper is devoted to the literature review on the chosen topic. The next section deals with the synthesis of outcomes which emphasize the critical evaluation of the literature review. The succeeding section deals with the concept of game-changers which predominantly assists the manager followed by the last section which is the conclusion.
According to the paper written by Braithwaite et. al., (2017), the authors say that an individual organization has its own unique culture. It is believed according to this paper that if an organization or a health care establishment has a positive organizational culture, then automatically, the patient outcomes also turn out to be positive. This article has followed the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses) statement and has thereby assessed and amalgamated the evidence to the degree to which the workplace culture is related with the patient outcomes. Various settings are used in this article that relates to the health care and nursing department, for example, hospitals, pharmacies, aged care facilities, general practices, military hospitals, mental health, and the likely. The participants of this article were not having any similar characteristics and rather were heterogeneous. The result was as discussed before that there is a positive correlation between the quality of service and the patient outcome. The more positive the service, the more positive the outcome, for example, reduced mortality rates, reduction in the hospital infection, and the satisfaction level of the patients also increased.
In the article written by Platis, Reklitis & Zimeras (2015), it is mentioned that the performance of the health care professionals is extremely important because performance is closely knit with knowledge management, the effectiveness of the health care professionals, and quality from the side of the health care professionals and financing, management, and development of the establishment from the side of the organization. This work explores the reasons which contribute to the general performance level of the doctors and the nurses, for example, the work satisfaction, the work environment, and the compensation policies. This paper predominantly studies the correlation between these two concepts which pertain to the work satisfaction and the performance level of the employees using the 7 points Likert scale with 246 nurses. This literature review is quite good as it focuses on the causes which lead to the performance level of the nurses and if the performance level is good, automatically, the patient outcomes will also be positive. If the root cause is not mended, the outcome will never be positive.
Improving the performance level of healthcare professionals for better outcomes
In the paper by Jeffreys (2015), it is said that to receive proper quality health care from nurses in this modern era of the 21st century, the focus should be on cultural competence education and a host of other factors like professional education and professional life. This article delves deep into some of the research questions like ‘Why optimal culture competence?’ The answers to the questions are discussed in detail saying that culture is really important for acquiring positive outcomes in the patients and the organization. It also says that the US Department of Health and Human Services had two goals which it was unable to achieve. The first goal was that the healthy life of the population in terms of quality and years of life could only be achieved if a proper ‘quality of life’ check and the ‘health and well-being’ are put to practice in the context of culture. The second goal pertained to the eradication of the unequal disparity of health in the US which required competent actions which were specific to the culture as well. These goals were unfortunately not achieved and remained in the form of pen and paper format. This literature review was not very interesting as the studies in the article also were not able to achieve the targets, and the questions addressed in the paper will not be able to able to achieve the target because the main focus of this paper is cultural competence.
Nayak & Sahoo (2015) in their paper goes along a similar line as the previous papers reviewed. The authors opine that in the health care department if there is a positive movement towards the quality of health care, then consequentially, the Quality of Work Life (QWL) of the frontline professionals would improve. The tests conducted in this study applied SPSS 20 with 205 valid responses. The paper concludes that if the QWL is good from an absolute point of view, then the employees will naturally be motivated and retain qualifications.
Much of the literature review which was studied in this paper talked about the positive correlation between the work culture and the patient outcome. The works of the literature suggested that if the work culture or the work environment is positive or conducive for working, then the doctors and the nurses will feel motivated to work. As the frontline health care professionals feel motivated to work, their work performance will get reflected in their care towards the patient. The more care a particular patient receives, the better the outcome. The pieces of the literature had conducted many tests regarding this and all had reached this conclusion. Some problems which may arise in this situation are that if the health care professionals face a high amount of stress then there will not be any positive impact on their work culture. If the workload pressure on each staff increases due to the increase in demand, for example, in the government hospitals or large private hospitals too, then the quality of care given to the patients will decline for the worse. Another problem that may arise as a result of this problem is that, if the health care professionals face too much work pressure, then they may tend to be absent from work (Bayot, Tadi & Sharts-Hopko, 2021). Therefore, the managers and the leaders of the health care department should not only focus on the work output and the profit but they should also shift their focus towards these issues. The managers must keep in mind that the health care personnel like the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory staff, clerks, technicians, hospital engineers, housekeeping service are the support system of the organization. Therefore, the strategies that are made should aim at improving the positive work culture and that should always remain a priority.
There are a few game changers that can be suggested in this situation and are listed down as follows:
- There are huge costs involved in treating a patient at the hospital nowadays. It would be better if the health care services were developed within the patient’s home if and only if some eligibility criteria are met. This will become more common in the future since technology will upgrade and will eradicate all hospital infections as well as increase the comfort of the patient too (Uzman et. al., 2019).
- There can be the development of mobile apps which provide health care. There can be the record of the individual patients in the app like the measure blood pressure or glucose readings which keep a track of the ailments. These apps can even guide the patients in lieu of their ailments if the ailment is a minor one!
- Point of Care Tests (PoCTs) can be more generalized in terms of their supply. In this technology, there are millions of tests that are conducted on a chip with just a few drops of blood. PoCTs main target is to empower the consumers and also provide the patients with due care. The results achieved through this process are reliable and instantaneous.
Conclusion
The main focus area of this paper is to make the frontline workers understand the gravity of the work that they are doing which is to make the health of millions of patients better every day and they can only achieve this target by maintaining a proper workplace culture and performance in team management. It should again be reiterated that the quality of care given to the patients should not be compromised at any cost and measures should be taken to avoid the situation where there is a probability of ignorance towards the patients.
References
Bayot, M. L., Tadi, P., & Sharts-Hopko, N. C. (2021). Work Culture. StatPearls [Internet].
Braithwaite, J., Herkes, J., Ludlow, K., Testa, L., & Lamprell, G. (2017). Association between organizational and workplace cultures, and patient outcomes: a systematic review. BMJ open, 7(11), e017708.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017708
Gupta, K. S., & Rokade, V. (2016). Importance of quality in health care sector: a review. Journal of Health Management, 18(1), 84-94. doi/10.1177/0972063415625527
Jeffreys, M. R. (2015). Teaching cultural competence in nursing and health care: Inquiry, action, and innovation. Springer Publishing Company.
Nayak, T., & Sahoo, C. K. (2015). Quality of work life and organizational performance: The mediating role of employee commitment. Journal of Health management, 17(3), 263-273.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0972063415589236
Platis, C., Reklitis, P., & Zimeras, S. (2015). Relation between job satisfaction and job performance in healthcare services. PROCEDIA-Social and behavioral sciences, 175, 480-487.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.1226
Uzman, N., Kusynova, Z., Manikkath, J., & Duggan, C. (2019). Making the profession attractive for our future and young pharmacists, the game changers for primary health care. Journal of Pharmacy Practice and Research, 49(4), 373-375.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jppr.1602
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