Prin/Meth Health Plane

Creating work environments for a health organization that are committed to patient safety will require fundamental changes in how the culture of the organization understands and acts on the science of safety. These changes require leadership skills of transforming not just a physical environment, but also the beliefs and practices of health care workers providing care in that environment and those individuals who establish the policies and practices that shape the environment.

Q. What in your view are the most important points to set a change in an/your organization? 

· Make an original post by Thursday, March 14th, at 11:59PM (CT) (250-350 words). 

· Respond to at least two posts from two different

· Each response to your peers must be at least 100 words. 

Student 1:

Leadership is very important to focus on when making changes within a work environment. Without establishing strong leadership, the staff won’t have clear expectations. Leaders set values, beliefs, and a mission statement for the organization. In my opinion, a single person cannot accomplish the mission on his or her own; therefore, creating a solid and effective team to enforce ideas and visions is the proper thing to do to fulfill these provisions. It is important to thoroughly explain these provisions upfront in order to make them succeed so that every staff member is on the same page. One of the biggest rules to live by is to lead by example. Success requires commitment to the organization as well as organizational sustainability. Leaders have to recognize when change is needed and then be able to implement a plan to strategize and improve the need. 

Patient safety is one of the most important things to practice in healthcare. Patient safety is something that should always be at the forefront of every healthcare provider, caretaker, and administrator’s mind. The patient’s safety is important to take into consideration because it determines the outcome of their health, which also reflects on the facility’s quality of care ratings. Patient safety is so vital in the health field and the most common mistakes that are made are often avoidable. Many errors in the medical field stem from medication errors. There are five rights of medication that have to be followed when medications are being dispensed: right patient, right drug, right time, right dose, and right route of administration. One way to improve these errors is effective teamwork. In the health field, it truly takes a village to meet the demands of care for all patients. The individuals who deliver care, are human and do make mistakes. Creating an effective team can positively affect patient safety and health outcomes. 

Simon Sineck once said, “leaders eat last” meaning that leaders in an organization know they could not excel without their team, so the leader should eat last out of respect for his team. A leader would be nothing without his team so that simple act of literally eating last shows that he cares about his team and wants them to be taken care of. A leader wants his team to know that he puts them before himself. Thus, letting the team know that they are important allows them to see the leader more clearly and will in turn, help the staff follow his/her example in patient safety and help them realize the importance of the changes that are trying to be made. 

Student 2:

One of the most important points to set a change in any organization is the ongoing communication between and among staff members. Management needs to communicate their vision and the changes that they wish to implement within their organization in a way that the staff understands the vision. On the other hand, employees need to also speak up and communicate with management if they think that there might be an issue with the proposed plan or if they think that they might have a better plan or approach to a situation. It is important that both management can effectively communicate with their staff members and that the staff feels comfortable enough to speak up and let their voice be heard.

The next important point to set a change in an organization is proper training of employees. With a change in an organization, it may also lead to a change in employee roles and responsibilities. Therefore, employees might need to be retrained for a different role or given more training to expand upon their current roles. Employees who are properly trained are also more likely to provide better care to their patients, in turn, improving overall patient safety.

When implementing any change it is important to obtain feedback on multiple levels. From the upper management who is overseeing the change to the employees implementing the change and the patients themselves, it is important to hear their thoughts on the changes and see if the changes that were implemented are having a positive, negative, or neutral effect. The feedback received will allow management to determine whether their policies and practices were effective or not.