Introduction
Organizational values are essential for the success of a healthcare institution. They define the vision and mission of the organization. Similarly, nurse values are vital for patient handling and maintenance of good relationships in the clinical workplace. Nursing aims at ensuring the wellness of patients by providing safe and compassionate care. This essay explores the relevance of aligning nurse values with organizational principles in healthcare settings.
How alignment of organizational values with the values of the nurse affect engagement in duty and patient outcomes
The alignment between the principles of an organization and nurse values has a significant effect on employee engagement in clinical tasks. This situation results in increased patient care. Some of the major organizational values include integrity, innovation, teamwork, honesty, excellence, standardization, communication, and coordination (Hendel, Eshel, Traister, & Galon, 2006). On the other hand, nurse values include the provision of safe and compassionate care, accountability, health promotion, and the creation of privacy among others. Both the organizational and nurse values focus on establishing professionalism within the healthcare system. These practices promote ethical behavior in the workplace. Proper alignment of the values ensures that a nurse articulates a clear vision towards clinical performance. In addition, it guarantees service effectiveness and patient safety. Organizational values are crucial for making clinical decisions (Canadian Nurses Association, 2008).
Value alignment promotes professionalism within healthcare settings; hence, it amplifies nurse engagement in patient care. Furthermore, organizations espouse principles that are aimed at promoting efficiency at work (Canadian Nurses Association, 2008). Matched organizational and nurse values underpin the provision of ethical healthcare services. Therefore, a combination of the two sets of values will increase workforce engagement. This situation results in better patient outcomes due to improved service delivery (Canadian Nurses Association, 2008).
How an individual can use effective communication techniques to overcome workplace challenges, encourage collaboration across groups, and promote effective problem solving
Nursing professionals can use effective communication techniques to alleviate challenges in an organization with a view of creating a harmonious workplace environment. Sometimes, inappropriate demeanors occur in hospitals. For instance, doctors can shout at nurses. In such occurrences, some nurses can react negatively. Such situations usually bring about clashes amongst various levels of medical practitioners. To overcome such challenges, nurses should not overreact and/or respond emotionally to chaotic situations in the workplace. As an alternative, they should remain calm and follow the appropriate communication channels to solve the issues.
Miller (2007) posits that proper communication should be used to resolve various conflicts that arise from self-interest, egocentrism, and interpersonal differences among employees. However, the establishment of pertinent information channels creates a strong basis for problem-solving. Conflicts in the workplace stress employees. This situation leads to underperformance; hence, it can further result in poor service delivery and delayed realization of goals. Therefore, there is always a need to resolve nurse disputes before they cause harm to other people, especially the patients. Nonetheless, the capacity to convince employees requires proper communication skills (Miller, 2007).
Effective communication techniques should also be applied to promote teamwork. However, proper interpersonal skills are paramount to the creation of harmonious relationships amongst individuals and teams in healthcare settings. Therefore, there is a need to establish pertinent communication strategies (Miller, 2007). According to Huber (2014), an individual can also use compassionate communication to overcome workplace challenges. This situation ensures proper patient handling due to the increased availability of information. Compassionate communication is emotive; hence, it can be applied to solve individual differences and stressful cases (Huber, 2014).
Instances from professional experience in which the values of the organization and values of individual nurses did or did not align
In some instances, organizational principles fail to match with nurse values. Such situations bring about chaos in clinical settings. A notable case occurred in the workplace during a decision-making process in which my values failed to match with the organizational principles. Nurses are required to promote and respect decision-making processes in healthcare institutions. The managerial body was proposed to acquisition new equipment for patient care and handling. In a personalized professional view, the decision to purchase the new equipment was not good since there were other proper apparatus in the hospital. Therefore, the management should have put the existing equipment into use instead of buying new ones. The management had the mandate to make all the decisions that affected the organization regardless of my efforts to stop them. As a result, they ended up acquisitioning high-tech machinery whose functionality was inferior as compared to the existing ones. Such decisions failed to align with my values in the organization. However, I had to comply with their deliberations since I had no capacity to alter the decisions. The situation led to demoralization. As a result, patient outcome deteriorated significantly. Nonetheless, nursing requires a high degree of integrity and cooperation to achieve clinical objectives in healthcare settings.
Conclusion
Communication can be used to overcome workplace challenges whilst encouraging cooperation amongst groups; hence, it is essential for effective implementation of policies in the organization. Effective delegation should be ensured through clarity of tasks and policies. Furthermore, grievances of the junior staff should be handled by ensuring that there is proper flow of information from the top management to their departments.
Reference List
Canadian Nurses Association (2008). Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses. Web.
Hendel, T., Eshel, N., Traister, L., & Galon, V. (2006). Readiness for Future Managerial Leadership Roles: Nursing Students’ Perceived Importance of Organizational Values. Journal of Professional Nursing, 22(6), 339-46.
Huber, D. (2014). Leadership and Nursing Care Management. Maryland Heights, MO: Saunders Elsevier.
Miller, K. (2007). Compassionate Communication in the Workplace: Exploring Processes of Noticing, Connecting, and Responding. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 35(3), 223-45.