Introduction
The cultural and structural aspects of healthcare organizations are critical in determining the quality of service provision and potential outcomes. Particularly, these factors can either contribute to failure or foster excellence because they represent shared beliefs, norms and modes of operation, routines, reward systems, traditions, and governance hierarchies in institutions. Thus, the role of managers is to coordinate processes and work with individuals to ascertain positive developments by countering associated challenges. The following paragraphs discuss the implications of organizational structure and culture on performance, the role of managers in promoting teamwork, the essence of interprofessional collaboration, and how nurse leaders can promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The Impact of Organizational Structure on Patient Care Delivery and Outcomes
Over the years, medical service providers have shifted focus to patient-centered outcomes due to increased demand for high-quality care and patient’s awareness of their right to healthcare. As a result, an organization’s structure, referring to the strategies adopted to ensure that an institution is functional and operating as expected, defines the rules, regulations, roles, and responsibilities of leaders and staff toward the outcomes (Liu et al., 2018). Health institutions are complex systems because they constantly interact with their internal and external environments to oversee service providers and assure respectable levels of care. Hence, factors like ownership, mission, vision, leadership, and management significantly affect processes as they dictate the prioritization of objectives and the allocation of resources towards specific results (Berberoglu, 2018). For example, an organization whose mission and goal is to provide nursing education in conjunction with health services might face unique challenges if its structure does not align with its goals. As a result, the organization may showcase poor performance and diminished service delivery.
The Impact of Organizational Culture on Patient Care Delivery Process and Outcomes
An organization’s culture broadly defines the acceptable modes of operation and assigns meaning to certain processes adopted to reach its ultimate goals. Organizational culture in healthcare institutions describes the norms, preferences, and actions taken to ensure that things run smoothly and limit conflicts that arise in high-pressure environments. Thus, culture influences interpersonal relationships, leadership hierarchies, communication channels, decision-making protocols, and individuals’ interactions. According to Nelson et al. (2020), institutional culture takes time to establish and efforts to sustain depending on an organization’s ultimate goals and available resources. In addition, the researchers suggest that positive cultures in medical institutions are associated with reduced falls, diminished mortality, limited hospital-acquired infections, and increased levels of staff and patient satisfaction. On the contrary, negative organizational cultures like poor communication and the lack of accountability can allow medical practitioners to neglect their responsibilities (Berberoglu, 2018). Moreover, negative cultures may not acknowledge the well-being of staff, resulting in reduced motivation and poor service provision. Therefore, advocating for positive cultures like collaboration, effective communication, and good leadership can increase productivity and staff willingness to deliver, thus improving health service outcomes.
Interprofessional Collaboration and its Impact on an Organization’s Culture
Nurses are exposed to diverse and unique environments because they deal with individuals who are desperate for prompt assistance. Subsequently, nursing obligations can be stressful and lead to low productivity due to diminished morale and burnout (Nelson et al., 2020). However, interprofessional collaboration or the collective involvement of individuals from different fields of expertise to aid nursing responsibilities can help nurses to alleviate the challenges associated with catering to the needs of these individuals as it allows the input of different perspectives in addressing health concerns. Interprofessional collaboration acknowledges the essence of other health service providers, communities, families, and caregivers in assuring high-quality services. Through teamwork, practitioners can inspire and educate each other, and rely on each other’s assistance in complicated tasks (Rosen et al., 2018). Thus, interprofessional collaboration fosters strong interdisciplinary relations, which is critical in introducing shared expertise to medical issues for more effective delivery. With time, collaboration improves organizational culture by encouraging individuals to take advantage of the resources around them and the knowledge of others to pursue professional goals. As a result, collaboration is beneficial in complex systems like medical institutions as it maximizes efficiency and encourages continuous development.
The Role of Nurse Leaders in Promoting Teamwork to Enhance Safety
Healthcare institutions constitute high-pressure environments because of increased stress levels and complicated processes associated with morbidity. As a result, nurses and medical staff experience several challenges in multitasking and avoiding mistakes that can deteriorate individuals’ health and service outcomes. Even so, medical errors in institutions are unavoidable as staff members are obligated to juggle several responsibilities (Liu et al., 2018). However, practitioners can significantly mitigate themselves against these setbacks by working together. Nurses and nurse leaders interact with individuals through all levels of an organization. As a result, they play a major role in promoting teamwork by guiding individuals toward interprofessional collaboration, establishing goals, promoting mutual respect, proactively handling conflicts between individuals, and advocating for mutual respect (Rosen et al., 2018). Similarly, nurse leaders are responsible for assigning duties and delegating responsibilities to avoid confusion. In the process, staff members will be more organized and always adopt the appropriate approaches to medical issues, hence ensuring safety and limiting medical errors.
The Role of Nurse Leaders in Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Healthcare institutions comprise individuals from diverse backgrounds and shared beliefs or practices that occasionally differ. As a result, individuals’ values may come in the way of high-quality service provision, especially if institutional cultures do not welcome diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, since nurse leaders are tasked with ensuring a conducive environment for appropriate healthcare service delivery and evidence-based practice, they are responsible for ensuring that people from different backgrounds work together to avoid bias that could deteriorate health outcomes (Morrison et al., 2021). Nurse leaders in medical institutions can promote DEI in institutions by educating workgroups on the essence of cultural competence and the setbacks of non-inclusivity. In addition, nurses should collaborate to create a sense of belonging regardless of an individual’s beliefs, characteristics, or values. Moreover, it is important to encourage everyone to openly communicate, contribute their opinions, and share views (Nelson et al., 2020). Ultimately, these initiatives provide practitioners with opportunities to learn more about other cultures and enhance their decision-making initiatives. In turn, DEI will have a positive impact on organizational cultures and healthcare delivery since all nurses will be equipped and informed of how to cater to the needs of all individuals, regardless of personal differences.
Conclusion
Nurses play a principal role in establishing viable organizational cultures and developing institutional structures aimed at achieving positive health outcomes because they associate and interact with individuals through all organizational departments. More specifically, nurses have a role in fostering positive cultures that encourage teamwork, interprofessional collaboration, diversity, inclusivity, and equity. Medical institutions are highly integrated and comprise individuals from various backgrounds. As a result, the role of nurses is to coordinate processes that realize the expected outcomes by addressing the limitations of culture and encouraging teamwork for improved outcomes. Healthy cultures and supportive environments can alter patient outcomes as they prevent dissatisfaction and encourage productivity. Thus, it is necessary to prioritize these components as they ensure limited errors, patient safety, reliable resource allocation, and continuous improvements.
References
Berberoglu, A. (2018). Impact of organizational climate on organizational commitment and perceived organizational performance: empirical evidence from public hospitals. BMC health services research, 18(1), 1-9. Web.
Liu, X., Zheng, J., Liu, K., Baggs, J. G., Liu, J., Wu, Y., & You, L. (2018). Hospital nursing organizational factors, nursing care left undone, and nurse burnout as predictors of patient safety: A structural equation modeling analysis. International journal of nursing studies, 86, 82-89. Web.
Morrison, V., Hauch, R. R., Perez, E., Bates, M., Sepe, P., & Dans, M. (2021). Diversity, equity, and inclusion in nursing: the pathway to excellence framework alignment. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 45(4), 311-323. Web.
Nelson, W. A., Taylor, E., & Walsh, T. (2020). Building an ethical organizational culture. The health care manager, 39(4), 168-174. Web.
Rosen, M. A., DiazGranados, D., Dietz, A. S., Benishek, L. E., Thompson, D., Pronovost, P. J., & Weaver, S. J. (2018). Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-quality care. American Psychologist, 73(4), 433. Web.