MHA5010 WEEK 2 DISCUSSION AND PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

MHA5010 HEALTHCARE MGMT AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR WEEK 2 LECTURE Page | 1

Diversity and Cultural Competency

Diversity can be defined as a full range of human similarities that can differ when you identify groups, including gender, race/ethnicity, social class, role, age, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, and other group identities. Diversity management is a driven process with an emphasis on building skills and creating policies that will address the changing demographics of the workforce and patient population. Cultural competency, on the other hand, involves the culture of integrated patterns of human behavior that can include language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups. Competence deals with the capacity to function effectively as an individual and an organization within the context of the cultural beliefs, behaviors, and needs.

Some of the challenges that healthcare organizations face today with regards to diversity and cultural competency include the following:

· Healthcare organizations need to be cultural competent to serve diverse patient populations.

· There will be an increase in the need for healthcare services as the population continues to age.

· At the same time, there is a lack of young and diverse workers entering healthcare professions.

· There is also a lack of women and other minorities in healthcare leadership roles.

Integration of cultural competency and diversity leads to a positive work environment by developing an atmosphere that recognizes and appreciates the differences in people, cultures, and beliefs. Healthcare managers/leaders need to acknowledge and embrace these differences. Finally, complete cultural awareness, sensitivity, and competence behaviors related to healthcare are necessary because even general ideas of health, illness, suffering, and care mean different things to different groups of patients.

Communication Barriers

Communication skills can be verbal and nonverbal words, phrases, voice tones, facial expressions, gestures, and body language. Verbal communication is the ability to explain and present your ideas to an audience. Oral communication requires some skills of presenting, critical listening, and body language. Nonverbal communication is the ability to enhance the expression of ideas and concepts without the use of coherent labels, through the use of body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. Nonverbal communication requires background skills such as audience awareness, personal presentation, and body language.

Barriers to Communication

Environmental barriers to communication can include characteristics of the organization and its environment that impact the communication in an organizational setting. Personal barriers to communication involve individuals and how they interact with others. To overcome communication barriers, there should always be attention to the message and time to discern this message. Management should encourage the free flow of communication, and healthcare managers/leaders should make sure that there is no distortion during the dissemination of information. In addition, healthcare leaders also need to make sure that the messages delivered are comprehensive and use whatever deliverable is helpful to convey complex messages.

During cross-cultural communication, there will always be a potential for difficulties in communication due to cultural values, languages, and points of view. Cultural competency requires empathy, curiosity, and respect since these qualities foster respect for the opinions and beliefs of others.

Hidden agendas, emotions, stress, prejudices, and defensiveness are just a few common barriers that need to be overcome in order to achieve the real goal of communication.

There are many ways you can communicate and develop these as you progress through your professional/personal lives. It will help you to know how to present your information to a certain audience or potentially know how your audience is receiving this information through nonverbal communication, such as body language or verbal communication with regards to tone and enunciation. Environmental barriers to communication as healthcare leaders/managers should be free of distortion and with the goal of making sure that the information is always comprehensive and clear.

Theories of Motivation

Motivation is the psychological process that encourages you to fulfil your needs or wants that are aimed at accomplishing goals or providing incentives. Research shows that motivated and productive employees contribute to the success of a healthcare organization. It is important for healthcare managers/leaders to always look for ways to increase employee motivation because motivated employees will lead to increased work quality and improved attendance. Once healthcare managers/leaders find out what motivates their employees, they can use this information to reach the healthcare organizations’ goals/objectives by potentially utilizing incentives. For example, the healthcare manager/leader can use rewards when it comes to great customer service. When managers know what motivates their employees, they can leverage that information so that the employees are effective.

To better understand motivation, you have to understand how your brain thinks and the actual process of motivation. Your brain thinks and at the same time automatically runs the various body systems. So, while this is happening another process is working simultaneously.

Motivation theories ask the question, why and how the actuating force is activated and how it works to accomplish its goal. Content theories and process theories are two types of motivation theories. The content theories of motivation explain the specific factors that motivate people and answer the very important question “what drives behavior?” For example, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is one of the most well-known content theories. It discusses the lack of evidence, that workers have a single dominant need, and the lack of information, that a need is reduced when gratified. When discussing Maslow’s Hierarchy, the theory examines the difficulty of explaining the behavior of individuals who neglect their lower-level needs in pursuit of higher-level needs (e.g., starving artist).

The process theories of motivation explain how an individual’s behavior is energized, directed, sustained, and stopped.

By knowing, understanding, and using these theories, it is possible to become a better healthcare manager/leader. To understand motivation, you need to understand how this process works and this depends on the individual. It is critical that healthcare managers/leaders understand that practicing motivational procedures should not take a cookie-cutter approach. Many employees are motivated by financial rewards while others like a combination of recognition and financial rewards. Healthcare managers/leaders should get to know each employee to determine what motivates everyone and then develop an individualized approach. Another critical piece, when it comes to rewards, healthcare managers/leaders should also consider how frequently they offer motivational rewards and the amount of rewards offered at one time. Finding the balance between these is very critical.