work

FYI: IN EACH COLLEAGUE RESPONE ADD TWO IN TEST CITATION AND REFERENCES APA STYLE

By Day 6 of Week 7

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days by sharing ideas for how shortcomings discovered in their evaluations and/or their examples of incivility could have been managed more effectively.

COLLEAGUE 1

The work environment assessment is the evaluation about the employer’s whole place or the section of the work place where we work daily. This assessment can be done by evaluation of the health condition and safety of the workplace; furthermore reasons of unresolved conflicts can be discovered. There are chances of improvement by finding the weaknesses, strengths, threats, and opportunities in the workplace (Kelleher-Flight, 2013).I got the results from work environment by Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory, which reveals that the workplace I work in is mildly healthy.

The workload is distributed evenly and is reasonable, and manageable, but there are still conflicts among staff member as they do not utilize practical conflict-resolution skills and responsibly communicate with each other. There might be other reasons but lack of communication is at many levels of organizations. There is a great need to review the organizational culture and make needed improvements (Clark, 2015). As per results revealed from the Clark Healthy workplace inventory, some incivility is undoubtedly present in the organization I work. According to Armstrong (2017), incivility potentially causes physical and emotional distress and can affect the quality of work delivered. The effect of incivility on nurses is huge as it leads to poor mental health, stress, impaired relations among staff, burnout, psychological empowerment and impaired cognitive performance in their work environment.

In the field of health care nursing is very respectable profession. If there is a lack of a response system, there will be a potential to lose a large amount of interest, respect, and inspiration in the working community. There are a few times I noticed that senior staff is not cooperative with the new hires, they don’t guide them properly and also there is lack of team work at the same time. Secondly it was noticed many times that nurses are very lazy and did not administer PRN medications as requested by patients, so it is essential to have the right response system to combat incivility. As per Ives-Erickson (2010), a strong leader works towards improving the environment for both patients and nurses.

I have an example regarding the incivility involving both patient and nurse in the medical-surgical building. In this specific scenario, a patient who is known to be a narcotic seeker as he usually requests narcotic pain medication for back pain and is refusing assessment. He got agitated as he felt nurses were not paying attention to his needs. The patient started yelling, screaming, and started using abusive language. All of a sudden, he walked towards nurse; he pushed the nurse, and tried to hit her. The other staff member intervened, along with custody officer and the scenario ended with lot of paper work to report the incident. This situation not only affected the nurse involved but also threatened the other patients and staff members as they felt scared, helpless, and frightened. The Inappropriate and late interventions makes the nurse to feel physically and emotionally hurt. This leads to a poor mood among all the staff members and patients for the rest of the day. This depicts that incivility occurs beyond the individual involved. For avoiding the future incidences of the situation mentioned above, a zero tolerance policy is introduced in the organization. As per Longo (2010), the organization should have sound strategies such as a zero-tolerance policy to address disruptive behaviors.

Colleague 2

I completed the work environment assessment, and unfortunately I was not surprised by the results. My facility scored a 40 based on my utilization of the assessment tool. This score placed my facility as very unhealthy. I have been with my current facility since 2004, I have seen some tough times here, but nothing compares to our current state. Civility in the workplace is important because it is the foundation for patient safety, creates a healthy work environment, healthy staff and increased productivity. Nursing has a long standing reputation for being the most caring and trusted profession while, “eating their young” (Milesky, Baptiste, Foronda, Dupler, & Belcher, 2015)

When reviewing the results of my workplace assessment, it became evident that leadership played a major role in civility within the workplace. Currently our facility has had multiple large shifts in leadership roles. Our nurse executive leader has recently been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and has had to step down from her role. Our facility is facing some very difficult times with staffing and this has definitely placed an even larger strain on our already stressed staff. One major low scoring question was “employees are viewed as assets and valued partners within the organization” (Clark, 2015). The organization has recently given employees an increase in pay in an attempt to keep up with local area hospitals, however this still places the base pay well below surrounding area hospitals. This also goes with the statement regarding competitive salaries. I have also heard many staff voice their concerns that upper management “doesn’t care that they are drowning”. This is viewed as disrespect amongst clinical staff. Incivility creates toxic work environments, thus driving nurses away from the profession and adversely affecting patients (Milesky, Baptiste, Foronda, Dupler, & Belcher, 2015).

Another area that I feel my organization is lacking, is that of effective communication. A prime example was just this morning, my unit decided to hold an “emergency staff meeting”, to address the recent exodus of nurses from the unit. My unit is an outpatient chemotherapy unit, I have been with this particular unit for 10 years. Last year I left for one year to work in our CVSICU, in order to care for my children while they were home from school. Working night shift in the midst of the Covid pandemic in the Intensive Care Units certainly opened my eyes and gave me a newfound appreciation of my previous position in the Cancer Center. This morning during our staff meeting, staff were asked to provide constructive ideas to help better manage the number of patients we provide care for in a day. Unfortunately, our manager could not be present for the meeting because another staff nurse called out at our other location and ultimately this meeting turned into a very confrontational, nonconstructive discussion session. Effective communication in busy healthcare settings where staff are frequently stressed and patient care is at stake requires strong interpersonal skills and an awareness of self and others (Bramhall, 2014). Our charge nurse led this meeting, and in the eyes of some staff members, has been viewed as part of the difficulty in the unit. Effective communication is an important skill for nurses, to develop a rapport with the patients they care for (Bramhall, 2014). This is also true for the staff they work with. A healthy work environment is the key to providing excellent patient care.