Hospitals Managers Strategies

Strategies Which Hospitals Managers and Leaders Can Use To Maximize Ethical Behavior throughout Their Organization
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Course: management and leadership in healthcare
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Outline: Maximize Ethical Behavior in healthcare organizations
Introduction
Highlight the challenges of healthcare organizations in managing patient needs with scarce resources.
Ethical and professional standards are necessary to ethical practice.
Healthcare executives leading by example to maximize ethical behavior in hospitals.
Need for Ethical principles
Leaders create room for dialog on ethical issues and treat employees fairly to promote ethical behavior in organizations.
Healthcare providers have the .fiduciary responsibility to ensure that they improve patient care maintain trust and respect patient privacy.
Evidence- based practice (EBP)
Use of evidence-based practice to inform the decision-making process.
Emphasis on ECBP to improve quality of care.
Ethical leadership
Ethical leadership inspires others to avoid focusing self-interests to serve collective goals
Offer support to the healthcare workers through demonstrating moral courage to reduce chances of moral distress. To facilitate this, the leaders also take more responsibility or creating cultures that encourage ethical practices and acts of courage
Family and patient centered care
Family care is necessary to improve patient care
Emphasis on Family and patient centered care reaffirms medicinal professionalism and the core principles of ethical practice.
Ethical plans
The plans provide guidelines on what is to be achieved to ensure ethical behavior and the actions.
The executives demonstrate the importance of ethics in their decisions and practices.
Moral reasoning in leadership
Identifying leaders who on ethical issues to determine their moral reasoning.
To maximize ethical behavior healthcare leaders identify values and model these values.
Focusing on stewardship leadership
Stewardship leadership encourages sound ethical practices and fiscal sustainability.
Stewardship responsibilities focus on improving quality of care and patient interests.
Reducing conflict of interest
Leaders determine the policies that reduce conflict of interest reduce misunderstandings and ethical conflicts.
Healthcare managers and leaders promote patient autonomy, transparency and accountability to reduce conflict of interests.
Respecting Autonomy
Conflicts when there is no respect for patient autonomy, highlighting the need for an ethical framework
There is a need to respect patient autonomy as leaders need demonstrate show fair and unbiased decision-making.
Creating a positive moral climate
Adopting ethical practice to ensure that there is professionalism in provision of quality healthcare and improving patient safety.
Conclusion
Sum up on strategies to ensure ethical practice.
Introduction
Healthcare organizations are increasingly facing numerous challenges from financial pressures, patient safety issues, healthcare reform, quality improvement and consolidation. As such, healthcare managers and leaders need to take into account ethical concerns even as they face conflicts. Healthcare organizations need to be managed with the aim of ensuring that there is integrity while adhering to ethical and professional standards. The hospital managers and leaders are well placed to foster a climate that respects ethical practice by being role models while also acting in partnership with ethics committee to promote ethical practice. Policy positions themselves are not enough to promote ethical practice, since the decisions, behaviors and practices of hospital managers and leaders. This paper highlights strategies which hospitals managers and leaders can use to maximize ethical behavior throughout their organization.
Need for Ethical principles
There are numerous factors that influence ethical behavior in organizations. Leaders who encourage, reward ethical conduct, punish unethical practice, create room for dialog on ethical issues and treat employees fairly are more likely promote ethical behavior in organizations. Healthcare workers with political connections are likely to b less unethical, and there is a need to understand how the choice of leaders affects ethical practice (Deshpande, 2007). Institutionalizing values has been the main focus to promote ethical practice based on shared values, but values may be in conflict highlighting the need for leaders to be more practice in their approach to promoting ethical behavior. Caregivers have the fiduciary responsibility to ensure that they improve patient care maintain trust, show compassion in their practice. Hospital managers and leaders should not ignore the case for empowering who provide care and interact more often with patients (Winkler, Gruen, & Sussman, 2005).
Evidence- based practice (BP)
Walshe (2001) advocates use of evidence-based approaches in healthcare to integrate managerial practice whereby evidence is synthesized with the aim of informing the decision-making process when choosing policies. The case for evidence-based practice in decision-making is that when then there is adequate evidence then individuals will utilize if they have the knowledge and necessary skills (Walshe, 2001). Evidence-based practices are applicable in health care management, but there have been gaps in applying theory to practice. Studies focusing on health care interventions that are applicable have shown mixed results since there have at times been misuse of the interventions showing that there is a need to utilize evidence-based practice.
The case for Evidence-Based practice is that integrates all stakeholders to ensure there is quality health care, since EBP can reduce the risk the abuse, misuse, underuse and overuse of healthcare (Kumar, Grimmer-Somers & Hughes, 2010). Healthcare workers should ideally present information to patients if such evidence supports new practices and improves their health. The healthcare workers not only provide their services but also rely on research activities and EBP to improve patient outcome. Emphasis on Evidence-based practice can improve quality of care while also enabling the health workers to focus on both the ethical and professional requirements in integrating evidence. In any case, when the information pertaining to patients is to be disseminated the health workers require informed consent, and this allows them to respect ethical practice at all times when dealing with personal information.
Ethical leadership
Leaders influence their followers to accomplish a common aim, and ethical leadership can be transformational if it inspires others to avoid focusing self-interests to serve collective goals (Giessner & Quaquebeke, 2010). Healthcare executives use strategies that inspire and influence to have greater impact on adoption of ethical practice. Leaders and the workers have mental models that influence their worldview and working practice, and if there are fewer divergences between what leaders and workers believe there are similar expectation and fewer conflicts (Giessner & Quaquebeke, 2010). Leaders can identify what motivates the healthcare workers and their moral motives when designing ethical practice plan. The rationale for this approach is that the plan takes into account the ethicality judgments of the workers and there is less risk that there will be morally ambiguous situations arising from leaders and workers having different moral motives.
Patient care providers experience moral distress arising from conflicts in their roles and misalignment of their duties to patients (Edmonson, 2010). This is then associated with higher burnout and disengagement in the workplace. Nurses interact with patients more compared to physicians, but mot medical practitioners can act as moral agents. Edmonson (2010), points out that the nurse leaders can offer support to the care nurses and demonstrate moral courage to reduce chances of moral distress. To facilitate this, the leaders also take more responsibility or creating cultures that encourage ethical practices and acts of courage. Hence, the leaders need to be credible, visible, competence and experts who can inspire positive behavioral change for their insistence on moral courage. The nurses are then role models who are not afraid to speak up when there are violations to the rights of either nurses or patients.
Family and patient centered care
Another strategy is to emphasize family and patient centered care, where the leadership is proactive in their decision-making to ensure that the changes are consistent with improving patient care. This may call for changes in the mission statements of the healthcare organization to align the aims and resources of the organization with the intended changes. Patients expect positive changes, but it is the management who can ensure that the changes are well integrated into the hospital settings focusing on family and patient care requires a shift in perceptions by brining everyone on board with the aim of ensuring that the changes are long lasting. For instance, bringing together a steering committee tasked with implementing the changes requires leaders to utilize their skills to effect change and inspire others. This will likely create a climate where there is insistence on improving quality of care in a friendly and safe environment (Piper, 2011).
The attributes of the patient-centered approach to care reaffirms medical professionalism and the core principles of ethical practice (Braddock et al, 2010). The main focus on patient in-centered care is care quality improvement, and where possible patients and family members are provided with information for them to make decisions based on their needs and preferences (Braddock et al, 2010). Healthcare managers and leaders are in a good position to ensure that there is holistic patient care based on a patient and family-centered approach. This makes it easier to respect the patients’ rights and autonomy since there is patient engagement in an environment that supports ethical practice. Additionally, patient-centeredness has a positive influence on health outcomes and patient experiences highlighting the benefits of this approach on the health care system and support of medical ethics.
Ethical plans
Having ethical plans is another option available to hospital managers and leaders as it provides guidelines on what is to be achieved to ensure ethical behavior and the actions undertaken for this to be achieved. According to Foubert (1989), healthcare leaders who follow up on such plans reinforce the notion that change is necessary with plans addressing different aspects of ethical leadership responsibilities. the leadership plan need to be backed with actions since healthcare organizations work in communities, and the greater involvement of the leaders in public dialogue can improve relations. For the ethical action plans to be more sustainable then leaders ought to focus on the long-term approach since stakeholders will also understand the rationale of such plans, while allocating resources to achieve the identified objectives (Foubert, 1989).
Healthcare leaders have the obligation of creating ethical culture in an ethical working environment. The executives’ efforts begin with the demonstration of the importance of ethics in their decisions and practices. In enacting code of ethics, the guidelines should be adopted without ignoring impact on the workers who then accept the ethical standards of behavior. T commitment to behavior is reinforced through the review of principles, values with the leaders communicating any changes to the workforce when the changes are made. Since the ethical plan is crated to ensure that the healthcare workers behave ethically, ...