Designing a Healthcare Organization

Designing a Healthcare Organization
Student's Name
Institution
Designing a Healthcare Organization
Nurses are better situated to understand the needs of patients and are critical in creating new healthcare organizations or units. Nurses work under the guidance of nurse leaders and as Murray et al. (2018) reveal, nurse leadership also influences patient safety and outcomes. As such, it is important to design healthcare organizations with that in mind. The purpose of this report is to provide the board with information about the newly proposed nursing unit. The report will present the type of unit to be created, the organizational chart, and the attributes of the unit head. Further, the report will discuss staff empowerment strategies, the key team that will be formed, and the conflict resolution approach.
Type of Unit
I will be using my knowledge in leadership and management, coupled with my nursing practice, to create a maternal unit in the Kings Memorial Hospital. To promote population health and enhance global health, we need to focus on bringing to life healthy babies. Globally, maternal health is considered an important factor in promoting well-being and healthy lives for the population (Abdollahpour et al., 2019). As such, the provision of safe maternal care across the continuum is important. Yet, globally, about 800 women die every day from pregnancy-related causes (Abdollahpour et al., 2019). We have a role to play in enhancing access to quality, safe maternal care. Creating a maternal unit is the first step towards ensuring that women of all ages, races and socio-economic backgrounds have access to safe, high-quality maternal care before, during, and after giving birth. Also, through the new unit, we can advance knowledge on best practices and share that knowledge with others across the globe to improve maternal health.
The main focus in developing the maternity unit will be to provide safe, high-quality, and accessible maternity care. As revealed by Liberati et al. (2019), creating safe and quality maternity units requires utilizing evidence-based interventions such as checklists and care bundles and integrating supportive organizational structure, values, behaviors, practices, and processes. As such, we need to incorporate an organizational structure that allows this unit to function at optimum. We also need to establish values and behaviors that support nurses in providing safe and quality care. The established values, processes, behaviors, and structures have to be communicated to the unit members. Below are the vision, mission, and values of the maternity unit:
Our Vision
To provide high-quality, safe, and patient-centered maternity care to all women
Our Mission
The mission is the improvement of the safety and quality of maternity care by facilitating access to a skilled nursing workforce with a specialty in areas such as midwifery and obstetric. Further, we want to ensure that all women have access to the most effective care across the maternal care continuum.
Our Values
* Innovative
* Patient-centered
* Professionalism
* Equality
* Respect and dignity
* Accessible
The vision and mission statement and the values outlined above are appropriate for maternity unity because they provide direction towards providing safe and quality maternal care. The mission statement indicates that there must be access to skilled nurses in specialty areas such as midwifery to provide safe and quality care. Values such as innovativeness and professionalism are important because they enable nurses to provide quality and safe care by utilizing their professional training and innovative interventions. In addition to being guided by the vision, mission, and values above, the maternity unit will also incorporate the following features of safety as described by Liberati et al. (2020):
* Commitment by all unit members in care quality and safety improvement
* Continuous reinforcement of behaviors and values that promote safety and respect towards patients
* Teamwork and collaboration among the unit members
* Effective coordination and mobilization of the unit members
* High competence enhanced by formal and informal training
* Implementation of systems and processes to detect safety and quality issues
* Constant review of said processes and systems for safety promotion
Organizational Chart
The maternity unit will have a flat organizational structure. In this type of organizational structure, there are minimal layers across the chain of command (Kelly & Quesnelle, 2016). As such, there will be easier decision-making and communication among unit members. Staff nurses will only need to run their ideas by the head nurse, the head of the maternity unit at Kings Memorial Hospital. To communicate the organizational structure and the line of decision-making within the maternity unit, the following organizational chart will be used:
Figure1: Organizational chart
The Unit Head: As a Leader
As the head of the maternity unit, I will be a leader rather than a manager. As a leader, I will influence the actions of my unit's members, inspire, and motivate them (Kelly & Quesnelle, 2016) to ensure they stay committed to the unit's mission and vision of providing safe and quality maternity care. While creating the maternity unit, I had a guiding vision. I want to influence my followers to believe and commit to this guiding vision of providing women maternity health. I am charismatic, committed, resilient, hardworking, and passionate about nursing and maternal health in particular. I am good at selling my ideas to other people, and I want my unit nurses to buy into the concept of providing safe, high-quality, accessible maternal care.
To achieve these goals as a leader, I will have to develop certain attributes to make my leadership effective. Specifically, I want to develop the characteristics of a transformational leader. Transformational leadership involves managing and leading a group of followers and inspiring them to achieve a common vision (Heinen et al., 2019). According to Fischer (2017), transformational leadership is characterized by idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration. This type of leadership is ideal in nursing because the healthcare environment is constantly changing, and nurses need to adapt and can only do so under the proper supervision. This is what I want to do in the maternity unit. To create an environment that promotes safety and quality in maternal care, we will need to adapt quickly to changes and make the best out of difficult situations. As a transformational leader, I will help my unit make the necessary adjustments, whether due to demographic or regulatory changes. The attributes that I need to develop include: (1) active engagement with my unit staff, (2) encouraging them to share their ideas and participate in problem-solving, (3) supporting their professional and personal development, (4) challenging them to be creative and innovative, and (5) adapting quickly to situations (Fischer, 2017). I am used to making decisions alone and I know that engaging my unit and encouraging their participation will be difficult.
However, I can develop these attributes by being more aware of my shortcomings and building on...