Introduction to Workplace Culture in Healthcare
Workplace Culture gives a clear picture of the working environment in a given institution where various employees are expected to perform their day to day tasks. The culture of a healthcare workplaces influences the care delivered to the patients either positive or negative (Strand, Edgren, Borna, Lindgren, Wichmann-Hansen, & Stalmeijer, 2015). Good and effective care results to increased productivity and better outcomes while negligence and ignorance results to reduced productivity and inefficient results. With the right culture whereby all factors are considered such as ensuring all nurses are happy and contended and including proper and efficient measures whereby patients are fully cared for, the productivity of the institution is greatly influenced resulting to a positive result.
Positive outcomes of a healthcare are greatly influenced by the workplace culture according to a survey done by Mcdonald (2016). The survey proves that the culture of a healthcare is very important especially if good results are to be expected in terms of patients receiving the best care and support.
A healthcare should make sure its culture is designed such a way that it leads to both positive outcomes from the nurses and to the patients. Such a culture benefits both the nurses and the healthcare such that patients receive the best treatment from the nurses which later results to good results for the healthcare.
Regan, Wong, Laschinger, Cummings, Leiter, MacPhee, & Young?Ritchie, (2017) posits that an institution plays a very important role in enforcing the right workplace culture. The rules set in a healthcare that are to be followed should always ensure all the workers are productive including doctors, nurses and other technical staffs. This would ensure all members are able to do their work to their best and if a problem arises their fellow colleagues are ready to help.
Ensuring all members involved in an healthcare communicate with each other openly and with transparency and also with the patients is very important if the patients are treated properly. A healthcare should allow its workers to participate in training and team work building to improve the skills of various employees especially nurses who deal with different patients each day most of them suffering from different diseases. This enhances learning of new things and also building self-confidence among nurses.
Tillott (2013) points out how appreciating a work well done by the nurses would build a motivation and morale to the nurses who always feel less appreciated for the work they have done. This helps by nurses able to do their tasks with all their heart knowing that at least someone appreciates the effort they put in their work. By motivation and also setting goals and values that each and every nurse is supposed to achieve is a great step taken by a healthcare to ensure all results at the end of the day are positive and done with great efficiency by the nurses.
An instance where a lot of patients are treated or the availability of nurses is low, good appreciation helps to ensure the available nurses are able to take good care of all the available patients.
Importance of Workplace Culture in Healthcare
Individual cultures also play an important role in ensuring a positive culture in a healthcare environment. Personal beliefs, values and interests however different they are from different people influences the kind of culture of a healthcare. The most efficient ones ensure positive results of a healthcare. Cummings (2014) explains that the culture of the leaders in a place affects the interaction between the leaders and the ordinary workers.
Leaders whose personal cultures are not accommodating to all members greatly affects the communications and interaction between them. He also explains that to be able to lead people one has to have a cultural discipline that is able to accommodate all people and also regular people should also have a culture that is easy to interact with other members.
By enforcing this cultural discipline it provides a good and elaborate understanding between all workers including nurses and doctors in a healthcare which promotes good productivity. A culture whereby leaders and regular nurses understand each other properly results to good care and support to the patients.
The workplace culture in a healthcare should enable nurses to value their workmates who will help facilitate them and provide encouragement to them as described by Han (2016) on how workers should interact with each other. This will help in growth and development of their nursing career by learning from nurses with more experience and also supporting each other. Valuing their peers improves their correlation in working that would later result to a positive result and improvement to the care and support to their patients.
A culture of a healthcare workplace should be based on trust and integrity among the workers argues Eskola, Roos, Mccormack, Slater, Hahtela, & Suominen, (2016). This ensures proper services are offered to the patients and the necessary treatment is provided. This also improves the trust and integrity at personal levels.
Trusting one another ensures the first right information is passed and the right care and treatment is offered to all patients. By giving patients the right and proper treatment it enables quick recovery with should always be the main concern among nurses.
Manley (2011) describes the importance of consistency of a culture of a healthcare which should be of great importance. Sometimes trying to please all the workers for example by allowing them to do whatever they want seems worthy sends a wrong message. A working culture which provides good result should be done for a long period of time and will ensure each and every worker joining the institution will respect the culture found and pass it to the new recruits joining and can also be passes during practice development of the nurses.
Consistency make sure that only people that respect the culture of a specific healthcare are joining the institution and will adhere to each and every rule and culture available in the place. This makes sure nurses joining a place are ready to obey the rules in place.
A culture where the patients who needs emergent care are always be given the highest priority is well described by Hollinger-Smith (2017). The emergency should also be defined among the nurses to ensure the most emergent issues are not neglected in order to perform the claimed important task. Despite all patients being important, the ones that require emergent care and treatment should be given first priority.
Best Practices for Workplace Culture in Healthcare
This ensures no lives are lost due to negligence or ignorance. This can also be done by assigning some nurses to the emergency cases and others to the important patients despite not being an emergency. A well-defined care offered is very crucial especially when dealing with people’s lives where the personnel available are few or where lots of patients require treatment and care.
Sometimes situations may be very difficult and not so pleasing hence positive thinking should always be encouraged as explained by Phillips (2018). Dealing with patients may be a very difficult task whether it’s a sick patient or relatives of a patient. Positive thinking should be made a priority to ensure all parties involved are able to cope with different situation and have good expectation despite the level of difficulty experienced.
This provides the right motivation to the patients, nurses and all the people involved. A positive mindset is always good source of hope to everyone including the relatives, nurses and doctors involved. Hope provides a sense of giving the best a person can do even when dealing with an almost impossible situation. Therefore positive think is very crucial to a workplace culture as it provides the required motivation especially when dealing with a very difficult task.
Everyone should be expected to complete a task they started off they were assigned to. A culture with such a principle ensures self-discipline among workers and respect to everyone involved. Despite someone’s experience or the years they have been working Barratt (2018) explains how each and every member involved should complete their work and if they can’t do it they can ask for help.
It ensures everyone is treated equally and no one is disrespected by other workers. With each and every worker doing their jobs, the institution will always be delivering quality services to the patients with all the departments working perfectly.
A workplace culture where a safe environment is ensured helps in preventing all the negativity among all workers. Cusack (2016) points out how each and every health worker in a healthcare should respect their fellow workers despite being an intern or have been working for the longest time ever. There should be no bullying at all cost among workers which if happens should be greatly penalized.
With respect amongst themselves, the right motivation and support even to the interns is ensured. Honesty and integrity ensures the safety to all the workers who are then able to do their work with love and passion especially during dealing with the patients. Safety shown to the workers is later shown to the patients thereby ensuring a positive result from the patients.
Cummings (2014) gives a clear picture on how beginning a week with gratitude where a meeting is held for all the health workers to be appreciated and also appreciate each other creates a positive mindset for the week providing a good motivation. With workers receiving respect and appreciation from their fellow workers, it provides a positive bond and creates an environment where they care and honor each other.
Such a culture in a healthcare provides a good morale and improves team building since dealing with patients includes helping each other in taking care of patients. The respect and appreciation is then reciprocated to the patients receiving care and treatment.
Helping patients should always be treated as an opportunity to help them and not a problem to be solved (Vessey, Demarco, & Difazio, 2010). This will ensure the proper support, care and treatment is offered to patients. Sometimes dealing with other patients can prove to be a difficult task and the best solution is to encourage all workers to treat such situation as an opportunity to help the patients involved rather than treating it as a problem that requires solving or can be ignored. The same principle should also be applied when a problem arises between fellow colleagues (Hofmeyer, Toffoli, Vernon, Taylor, Klopper, Coetzee, & Fontaine, 2018).
Motivation and happiness should be greatly harnessed among workers (Sergeant, & Laws-Chapman, 2012). This should be a culture in a healthcare where a happy nurse is happy to care for the patients with a warm heart that is required. A happy employee reciprocates the happiness to the patients and a motivated employee does their job with the seriousness it requires.
This culture creates a good mood to both the employees and to the patients who they are attending to. Such a culture can be enforced by ensuring the workers are always paid well and in time and the work they are doing is highly appreciated. A nurse whose needs is well cared for is able to treat the patients with all the seriousness they deserve.
Cleary (2009) gives a clear picture on how to respond to situations at work and the importance of positivity especially when responding to fellow workmates or even to patients. Bullying amongst workers should not be allowed at all cost. If a patient or a fellow employee asks a question, good etiquette should be used and they should always be polite when delivering the reply.
Being so defensive create a situation whereby it’s not easy to trust and believe what they say. A nurse should learn to be creative and careful when responding especially to a patient’s concern or a question or when one is bullied or attacked by a fellow worker they should learn how to properly deal with the situation.
Random acts of kindness should be shown to patients especially those receiving care and also among fellow nurses. Offering to help or assist especially when not asked portrays a message whereby it becomes easy for the patients to always feel free around the nurses. Kindness should be an important virtue in the workplace culture to either fellow employees or patients receiving treatment from the institution.
Manley (2011) explains that communication between two workers or between worker and a patient is very crucial as it depicts what kind of person you are and also portrays the image of a healthcare. A positive culture of a healthcare should include a good mode of communication that consists of both respect and good etiquette. A good communication creates a good rapport for the institution and also individual personnel. It also creates a good understanding between the patients and nurses.
According to Manojlovich, & Ketefian, (2016) good personal behavior and presentation is very crucial especially when dealing with patients. Personal behaviors is important and also represents the behavior of the entire healthcare. Having a good behavior also encourages the patients to get help from a particular healthcare where the nurses presented themselves well with courtesy and in professional way.
A positive healthcare culture should have guidelines on how well workers should behave either around fellow workers or around patients. Personal behaviors results to either positive or negative results or outcomes thereby the behavior should be good if positive results are to be expected.
Conclusion:
The culture of a workplace such as a healthcare is very crucial especially if positive results are the main goal. The culture is either expected from the institution management or from the healthcare workers themselves. According to Berquist, St-Pierre, & Holmes, (2018) good rules and guidelines set controls the culture of a place and how well the workers follow them improves the results and services offered.
A workplace culture should not only depend on the institution only but should also involve the workers themselves. Research done on the importance of a good workplace culture has shown that it greatly improves the quality of services offered such as good and proper care to the patients in a healthcare. In a healthcare, the workplace culture should be able to benefit both the nurses who later results to good care and treatment to the patients and also benefit the institution as a whole.
References:
Barratt, C. (2018). Developing resilience: the role of nurses, healthcare teams and organizations. Nursing Standard.
Cleary, M., Hunt, G. E., Walter, G., & Robertson, M. (2009). Dealing with bullying in the workplace: Toward zero tolerance. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 47(12), 34-41.
Cummings, G. G., Grau, A. L., & Wong, C. A. (2014). Resonant leadership and workplace empowerment: The value of positive organizational cultures in reducing workplace incivility. NURSING, 32(1), 6.
Cusack, L., Smith, M., Hegney, D., Rees, C. S., Breen, L. J., Witt, R. R. … & Cheung, K. (2016). Exploring environmental factors in nursing workplaces that promote psychological resilience: constructing a unified theoretical model. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 600.
Han, E. H., & Ha, Y. (2016). Relationships among self-esteem, social support, nursing organizational culture, experience of workplace bullying, and consequence of workplace bullying in hospital nurses. Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration, 22(3), 303-312.
Hollinger-Smith, L. M., & Groenwald, S. L. (2017). The Importance of Meaningful Nursing Faculty Recognition: Influencing and Advancing a Caring Workplace Culture.
Mcdonald, G., Jackson, D., Vickers, M. H., & Wilkes, L. (2016). Surviving workplace adversity: a qualitative study of nurses and midwives and their strategies to increase personal resilience. Journal of nursing management, 24(1), 123-131.
Manley, K., Hills, V., & Marriot, S. (2011). Person-centered care: Principle of Nursing Practice D. Nursing Standard, 25(31).
Manley, K., Sanders, K., Cardiff, S., & Webster, J. (2011). Effective workplace culture: the attributes, enabling factors and consequences of a new concept. International Practice Development Journal, 1(2), 1-29.
Phillips, J. M., Stalter, A. M., Winegardner, S., Wiggs, C., & Jauch, A. (2018, January). Systems thinking and incivility in nursing practice: An integrative review. In Nursing forum.
Sergeant, J., & Laws-Chapman, C. (2012). Creating a positive workplace culture. Nursing Management (through 2013), 18(9), 14.
Strand, P., Edgren, G., Borna, P., Lindgren, S., Wichmann-Hansen, G., & Stalmeijer, R. E. (2015). Conceptions of how a learning or teaching curriculum, workplace culture and agency of individuals shape medical student learning and supervisory practices in the clinical workplace. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 20(2), 531-557.
Tillott, S., Walsh, K., & Moxham, L. (2013). Encouraging engagement at work to improve retention. Nursing Management (through 2013), 19 (10), 27.
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