Introduction
Caregivers establish a care arrangement where they operate in partnership with medical doctors, counselors, the patients’ relatives, in addition to other parties to offer care services with the view of boosting the sick persons’ health. In many jurisdictions, nurses participate in support, endorsement of a secure atmosphere, study, involvement in determining health guidelines, and inpatient and wellbeing systems administration and instruction. Hence, nurses are leaders in their areas of expertise. They work in collaboration with patients and their families to develop care plans. Institute of Medicine (IOM) terms this approach to care as patient-centered care. This paper discusses the development of a leadership goal based on the core competency of patient-centered care as established by the IOM.
IOM Core Competencies to Develop a Leadership SMART Goal
Although they are established within the context of SMART criteria, leadership development objectives are relevant if they are in line with the acceptable or scholarly proven best practices within a given body of knowledge or discipline. The scope of my leadership goals involves ensuring that nursing needs are aligned with the Institute of Medicines’ (IOM) core healthcare competencies. IOM uses the term patient-centered care to mean “providing care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions” (Sepucha, Uzogarra, & O’Connor, 2008, p.507). Patient -entered care entails one of the major goals for health advocacy. It underlines the concept of developing a safe medication system. Patient-centered care concepts are utilized in academic research to emphasize the consideration of patients’ participation in designing healthcare systems and care delivery processes. Hence, patient-centered care cannot occur without good patient-care provider relationships or fit.
I will work on the goal of developing leadership using the SMART criteria about managing patient-centered care. Patient–centered care entails establishing active participation of patient families and the patients in the process of designing healthcare models and in the decision-making process. Patient-centered care focuses on the participation of patients and their families in determining people’s options for treatment. This process requires active dialogue between the care providers, patients, and their families. However, the process may not occur in an environment of destructive conflicts between the healthcare providers and the patients or their family members.
Specific Leadership SMART Goal
Leaders act as the long-term vision carriers. Indeed, only effective leaders successfully enable their followers to achieve set out visions in the organizational strategic directions. As the future leader in nursing care facility that offers patient-centered care, I have a responsibility for ensuring that I serve the functions of inspiring the followers to work collectively in achieving specific goals, which are centered on the needs of the patients. This objective requires the development of leadership skills in the course of my career. Such skills can only be developed through the establishment of a sequence of sub-objectives that are necessary to achieve specific competency levels.
Objectives are effective if they are measurable and attainable. Indeed, the SMART approach to leadership learning objectives ensures that they are definite, quantifiable, realistic, significant, and bound by time. My goal is as follows
I will learn the disciplinary process key skills that are required to prepare, conduct, and conclude disciplinary action against an employee who engages in destructive conflicts with patients and their families by locating the organization’s conflicts management policy and meeting with the unit manager, reviewing peer-reviewed articles and credible websites to obtain information on the disciplinary process by week 6.
Destructive conflicts between care providers and the patients or their families act as an immense drawback for the success of patient-centered care model in any healthcare facility. A breakdown of the above goal evidences that it meets the SMART criteria. It is specific to the extent that it identifies the person (I) who will be involved in the skills development process. It also specifically identifies what will be learned, including how to prepare, conduct, and conclude disciplinary action against an employee who engages in destructive conflicts with patients and their families. The specific place is in my organization. Goals under SMART approach are measurable. Locating the organization’s conflicts management policy and querying on its contents underlines the measurability aspect of the leadership development goal.
The attainability aspect of analyzing leadership development plans require the incorporation of a definition of experts and resources used. In this leadership development goal, this aspect involves meeting with the unit manager and examining peer-reviewed articles and credible websites. The goal is realistic since resources are accessible through the organization, the policies, and through the unit manager. Credible websites and peer-reviewed articles are also freely accessible through academic libraries and other online platforms. The goal is also time bound since the skills are expected to be learned by the end of week 6.
Although the goal is aligned with the IOM core healthcare competences, it is important to query whether it is appropriate to discipline employees who fail to establish good communication or dialogue with the patients and their families in a health facility focusing on patient-centered care delivery. Disciplinary measures given to employees are meant to punish those who break a myriad of rules and procedures of an organization. Their main aim is to assist to encourage employees to perform better (Roche & Teague, 2012). Disciplinary interviews need to come up with ways of resolving issues in employee behavior and performance. This strategy has the repercussions of improving the effectiveness of employees.
Disciplinary measures should be correct, effective, and should not change whenever used in different employees for the same mistake. However, as Street, Makoul, Arora, and Epstein (2009) observe, employees must be given a chance to look into any matter they are accused of before management comes up with a decision on how to deal with defiant behaviors. Unconstructive conflicts between employees, patients, and their families destroy the environment of collaboration and communication. Therefore, patients or their families’ participation in the treatment process becomes negatively impaired. Thus, it is necessary to ensure that employees remain committed to eliminating negative conflicts that may impair success of patient-centered healthcare delivery model. Failure to comply with the code should attract disciplinary action.
Scholarly Articles and Credible Website relevant to my Leadership SMART Goal
The process of disciplining employees within an organization is developed by various scholarly works as documented in different peer-reviewed articles drawn from journals of nursing management, journals of patient education and counseling, and credible websites such as the American Nursing Association.
Nurses are required to maintain ethical practices in their work. This move has the effect of ensuring they remain committed to delivering high quality patient-centered care (American Nursing Association, 2015). Failure to accomplish this goal calls for the adoption of an appropriate disciplinary action. Roche and Teague (2012) assert that an effective disciplinary process should be written in a way that provides solutions fast without any discrimination. In nursing settings, it should permit the keeping of confidential information besides informing employees on the disciplinary step to be taken (Wilson et al., 2013). Moreover, it should state the management levels that are allowed to discipline employees besides allowing them to be aware of the crime they are accused of and/or if there is proof towards them before calling for a meeting to discipline them. Disciplinary procedures should state clearly that no employee will be terminated from work if it is the first time the employee misbehaves, except in case he or she behaves badly and in a gross manner. Management should conduct a full investigation of the misconduct before calling for a disciplinary action (Stanley, Gannon, & Gabuat, 2008).
Disciplining employees is accomplished through several steps. The first step involves taking formal actions to identify facts by giving an employee a notification through writing or having meetings. After the formal action is taken, the employee should be informed about the anticipated outcome of a disciplinary measure (Cadmus, 2011). Employees are then informed if there is a penalty associated with a certain action. They can also be given a written warning or a note informing them to change certain aspects that are not congruent with an organization’s codes of ethics. Employees should be given a chance to make an appeal before they are given a dismissal notice (Street et al., 2009). If the employee’s behavior does not change, further actions should be considered to help in improving his or her conduct. This process may include giving him or her mandatory leave with some benefits subtracted.
Plan of Action for the SMART Goal
The learning process will be achieved through first analyzing the peer-reviewed articles in nursing management and patient education and counseling and American nursing association websites for evidence-based process of disciplining employees who fail to comply with the established procedures for conducting patients and their families’ communication. Effort will be made to analyze the differences and similarities in approaches recommended in each article or website. A list of acceptable evidence-based approaches will be prepared. The activity will be completed by the end of week 1.
In week 2, I will study my organization’s policy pertaining to the management of patients or their families’ communication with the care providers. The policy is readily available through my organization online platform. Therefore, no authority is required to access it. In week 3 to 5, I will establish whether theory and practice link in terms of approaches deployed by any organization.
In week 3, I will gather information on the actual practice deployed by the company. To achieve this goal, I will interview the unit manager. In week 4 to 5, I will link theoretical processes or procedures to my organization’s code of practice. The goal here is to establish the differences between the actual practice and theory in approaches to reducing conflicts or appropriate communications in patient-centered care settings. In week 5, I will evaluate the findings and make recommendations necessary to breach the gap between theory and practice.
Conclusion
Nurses interact with patients during care delivery. The interaction may create room for destructive conflicts, which may impair patient-centered care delivery. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt an appropriate disciplinary action to nursing employees who engage in such destructive conflicts. The paper has discussed leadership SMART goal based on this concern that is achievable by week 6.
Reference List
American Nursing Association. (2015). Ethics. Web.
Cadmus, E. (2011). Your Role in Designing Healthcare. Nursing Management, 42(10), 32-42.
Roche, W., & Teague, P. (2012). Do conflict management systems matter? Human Resource Management journal, 51(8), 231–258.
Sepucha, K., Uzogarra, B., & O’Connor, M. (2008). Developing instruments to measure the quality of decisions: early results for a set of symptom-driven decisions. Patient Education Counseling, 73(3), 504–551.
Stanley, J., Gannon J., & Gabuat J. (2008). The clinical nurse leader: a catalyst for improving quality and patient safety. Journal of Nursing Management 16(5), 614-622.
Street, R., Makoul, G., Arora, K., & Epstein, M. (2009). How does communication heal? Pathways linking clinician-patient communication to health outcomes. Patient Education Counseling, 74(3), 295–301.
Wilson, L., Orff, S., Gerry, T., Shirley, B., Tabor, D., Caiazzo K., & Rouleau, D. (2013). Evolution of Innovative Roles: The Clinical Nurse Leader. Journal of Nursing Management, 21(1), 175–181.