The Role of the Leader in Patient Safety Performance Improvement

Discuss About The Developing A Performance Improvement Plan.

It is no doubt that there has been an increased need for a quality and performance improvement in the healthcare industry across the globe for the last couple of decades now. Apparently, the safety of an individual patient in the healthcare industry is a huge determinant of quality of care and therefore emerges as one of the main priority of any healthcare organization (Edwards, 2017). In this light, patient safety is often taken to be a rather heart of healthcare practice as well as nursing throughout the entire history of medicine. Nonetheless, there are those nondeliberate accidents that often occur to patients and should never be overlooked. One of the safety cares is the prevention of infection and many hospitals have taken various initiatives to make sure that there are minimum infections in their patients. In essence, the joint commission has as well listed this practice as one of the national patient goals in every healthcare facility particularly in Australia (Engle et al., 217). Under this focus, there is a need to improve the overall hygiene particularly hands hygiene through the use of clean guidelines that comes from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention also referred to as the World Health Organization. With the increase of patient infections in hospitals, it is quite evident that healthcare workers often fail to consistently wash their hands either before or rathe after caring for a particular patient. This has become one of the main causes of patient infections and needs to be resolved across the healthcare industry.

Primarily, cleaning of hands is no doubt one of the most effective measures of preventing and minimizing the overall transmission of healthcare-related infections. Essentially, the practice of hands cleaning across the healthcare present an important apprehension especially in patient’s safety as a result of ever-increasing rates of Clostridium difficile in hospitals. Apparently, such bacterium infection is difficult to do away with by the use of antiseptic hand preparation. Additionally, this ailment has indicated that it can indeed be a detrimental especially to a patient in the healthcare establishments across the globe. Notably, such organism is known to produce spores that are only removable by a rather proper hygiene which is through the use of soap as well as water. In this light, there are plenty of methods that can be used to remove and reduce the level of infections that are caused by these organisms. Such preventative measures include infection control measures, hand washing as well as environmental decontamination. This paper intends to focus on the role of the leader in this particular improvement, the type of leadership style that effect change, the steps required to implement this aspect of workplace performance, the overall impact of the workplace management, the main barriers and facilitators in the change process and management strategies, the importance of benchmarking best practices related to patient safety,  and strategies for motivating an engaging stakeholders or the staff in performance improvement. 

The Type(S) Of Leadership Style(S) That Can Effect Change

In essence, leaders in the healthcare industry are granted a legal as well as a moral obligation of ensuring that there is a high-quality patient care and to focus on the overall improvement of patient care. In this light, the main priorities of leaders in healthcare firms are to be accountable for a particular effective care while still protecting the entire components that constitute to the overall patient care not forgetting that of its employees (Bogner, 2018). The art of a set of thoughtful as well as competent leaders is to make sure that they contribute to the improvement in the firm’s culture and safety. Such leaders are always aware that there can be the existence of systemic flaws and therefore each procedure in the healthcare industry has a potential of failing because of hazards and weakness. It is, therefore, the role of these leaders to identify the existing problems and make sure that they find a meaningful solution before patients are affected. Latent hazards that healthcare leaders can solve include poor design, lack of overall supervision of medical works as well as manufacturing or rather maintenance defects. in this context, leaders can, therefore, make sure that there is a clear and thorough supervision of workers in the healthcare facilities to ensure that patients are safeguarded from any infections and that they are given a reputable healthcare services all through their recovery process.

Leaders are therefore called to the creation and an apparent maintenance of a culture of safety towards their patients and their workers. Leaders supposed to be committed to the creation of a safe environment to the patient as this is equally important to the whole resources that have been injected in the firm. The commitment by leaders to maintain a safe environment and conditions to the patient is often measured by what they do instead of what they normally say should be done. Beyond healthcare, there is an apparent and clear evidence of leadership impact on the safety of workplace (Sherwood & Barnsteiner, J2017). Noteworthy, there are indeed non-empirical articles that provide a proposition as well as a description on the attitude of leadership and efforts of safety improvement within the literature on healthcare.

Leaders have the attribute of recognizing rather good catches in which a particular adverse event can be avoided in the hospitals and therefore share these thoughts with the entire team members in the healthcare facility. There are therefore important ways in which these set of leaders can report back to the team members who tend to raise safety issues in the hospital. Some of these methods are through a shift of the overall unit huddles as well as the visual management borders. In this manner, there is a need for the concentration of a high-quality leadership attributes to foster a safety environmental care in the healthcare industry and particularly the overall hygiene of a particular patient in the hospital.

It is therefore evident that the art of leadership in the contemporary healthcare industry has turned out to be a rather complex responsibility. Despite the importance of a quality and mindful leadership in a particular organization it is important to put more attention to what these set of leaders are contributing to the sustainability of a safer patient environment. In this regards, understanding the role of leadership and the impact they could bring to a particular organization needs a detailed knowledge on the way leaders and leadership system is capable of shaping a firm’s strategy and behavior towards an improvement of patient care.

The debate on the overall impact of leadership styles in various business organizations and particularly in the healthcare sector has been a debated issue for the past couple of decades now. Apparently, the kind of style that is incorporated to any particular organization often affect everyone in that firm right from the senior leadership to the intern in a placement. These styles are fond of creating a certain culture that influences the organization and its overall performance. Some of the leadership styles that are tipped to influence change in any given health institutions include:

Primarily, this type of leadership is also known as the authoritarian style and it clearly defines the overall division that lies between the leaders and the entire set or workers. Apparently, this type of style requires a rather little involvement from the employees in a given organization. In this regards, leaders involved in this type of style are often very comfortable with every decision making steps regarding a certain plan or project. However, research indicates that this type of leadership style does not encourage innovativeness something that the contemporary world puts a lot of emphasis on. Nonetheless, this style is useful when there is a need for an urgent decision making in a certain organization as it does not involve complex process and avoids employee involvement who may be opposed to a particular decision made. 

In essence, this leadership style is also called the Democratic leadership attribute and is usually considered as the best option in various companies. Apparently, this style is as well considered to be the opposite of the autocratic leadership as leaders make decisions and still accepts inputs from the employee regarding decision making and any other process in a particular organization. In this way, leaders reserve the overall rights of arriving at the final decision while still encouraging feedbacks as well as ideas from all the employees. These types of leaders are always tipped to have more content workforce because each individual has at least input into the decision making.

This kind of leadership is considered by many people to be the least effective option of leadership style in the managerial world. Contrary to other managerial styles, this kind of method of leadership does not make a decision but rather leaves a particular group with the duty of deciding what to do regarding a certain plan or process. These leaders do not often give guidance to the workers but instead decides to leave this part to the trusted members of a certain group (Shanafelt & Noseworthy, 2017).

This managerial leadership style is also referred to as the organizational culture and therefore all things done is defined by the cooperate culture. Apparently, the leadership style in this context has often a strong impact on the cooperate culture, therefore, making employees to do things that reflects their leaders. Additionally, staff often aims at pleasing the management and the supervisors while doing their daily duties.

Noteworthy, to initiate a better hand washing technique in any health care facility to reduce the level of patient infections effectively requires a proper assessment in determining the best learning style. Apparently, there should be a relevant collection of data procedure in determining and supporting a proposed solution. In this way, the Joint Commission (JC) have for long suggested that:

Ø  One should understand the importance of investigating an apparent reason for the increased of non-adherence to the guidelines surrounding the patient hygiene before kick-starting an improvement plan. In this regards, it is possible to determine whether the adherence is affected by the organization physical facility in making a certain product available or rather the level of accountability among the workers.

It is therefore important to note the effect of a patient acquiring a certain infection as it may lead to overstay in the hospital (Flin & O’Connor, 2017). Additionally, there would be an increase in the hours of patient care required by the staff member, therefore, increasing the hospitalization cost in the long run. This, therefore, triggers the importance of informing the healthcare workers of the effect of an increased operational cost.

After analyzing the needs and assessment plan, the health care leadership should then conduct a meeting involving the safety committee to enable a viable discussion while supporting data collection that would facilitate the implementation of the hand hygiene. With the acquired data the committee would then suggest various solutions that might fit the current problem in the healthcare organization.

The organizers of the meetings should make sure that the proposed solutions are conveyed to the general staff in rather clear as well as honest manner. Essentially, in case the hand hygiene program is accepted by the majority of the participant then there is a need for a fro planning for an educational meeting to enable the discussion of the process of infection, transmission, the protection of patient and employees, and a proper technique for making sure that the hands are clean. The staff is then required to observe a proper hand washing method following the educational meeting. In this light, the required supplies and equipment’s include sinks, a germ kit, clean water, and a paper towels (Rothwell, Hohne, & King, 2018).

Participative leadership should be used by the nurse leader to make sure that the change is implemented. In this regards, there is an aspect of assuming that a particular change can be effected by providing new knowledge that can result in a rather positive attitude. Apparently, this is because the entire participants are given the chance of giving in the ideas as well as supporting new ideas (Mathews et al., 2017). The leadership is often tipped to contain empirical-rational as well as a normative strategy. The nurse leader should then come up with a way of making sure that a committee is set to implement a detailed protocol for the hand washing program for the improvement of the overall hygiene.

According to Anders and Hawkins (2006), Lippitt articulates that there is an important emphasis on an active participation by a key section of a given member of a system in the entire process of change. This theory, therefore, establishes the basis for the apparent development of a set staff member and committee in the implementation of the approved solution. With this kind of theory, there is a room of involving the staff and allow them to make a contribution to a solution that can be accepted by their co-workers. Additionally, there is the likelihood of peer motivation and an apparent role modeling for a rather long-term compliance.

In many instances, a certain organization culture is responsible for providing the overall framework with respect to the workers’ behaviors in their respective workplaces, particularly in the healthcare industry. Apparently, an organizational culture can, therefore, impact the employees’ performance either negatively or positively. A particular healthcare organization in which the workers are considered as the main part of the growth process often encourages the employees’ commitment towards the goal of the selected healthcare institution. Additionally, these set of employees often align their goals as well as objects to fit those of the companies they work in and therefore feel much responsible of the entire well-being of the firm (Frankel & PGCMS, 2018). Noteworthy, they feel satisfied with their role and work in a certain organization when their efforts are rewarded and appreciated by the management. In such environment, an employee is always committed to attaining their goals and therefore poses a positive effect on the performance particularly of service delivery to the patients.

To a larger extent, the overall performance of a particular set of workers is determined by the available organization culture. It is, therefore, the ultimate interest of any organization to make sure that it has eliminated all possible negative factors that can lead to lower performance deliverance by the employees. This always fosters a positive workplace environment and thus facilitates a safety patient adherence by the workers in a particular healthcare organization.

Patient safety has emerged to one of the most important issue in the recent domestic as well as the international initiative various reports have therefore had focus in solidifying the overall patient safety movement as well as the role of leadership in the prevention of patients infections in the healthcare industry (Holmboe, Durning, & Hawkins, 2017). As a result of this attribute, there has been plenty of patient safety care focusing on the identification of the available problem and coming up with a diligent solution to that problem. In this case, some of the barriers include lack of awareness, legal issues, demographics, and setting as well as the severity of a particular illness. On the other hand, the main facilitators in this regards include, provider modeling, willingness to participate, patient education, and risk reception or rather the preventability of a certain ailment.

Lack of awareness, in essence, lack of awareness is cited as one of the main barriers to the patient engagement as well as patient safety practices. Apparently, the overall lack of a detailed understanding of what patient safety engagement has become a problem especially in the provision of the hygienic environment by health care workers across the globe and particularly in Australia.

Demographics primarily, recent researches have indicated some of the effects patient demographic factors can have on the prevention strategies of infections. In this way, most of the health workers do not have the required knowledge of the composition of the patient population and therefore cannot come up with a decisive solution to a certain infection.

Legality There has been an increasing uncertainty regarding the overall patient involvement in their own care as well as error prevention of infections in the healthcare system. Apparently, this has led to the change in the responsibility of both the patient and the healthcare providers.

Health care settings and illness It is no doubt that the setting, as well as the nature of a particular disease, can hugely impact the way patients are supposed to be engaged in the error prevention strategies.

Provide modeling one of the main facilitators towards a successful patient engagement is to come up with a suitable provider behavior and physician modeling. In this case, patients are often opposed to those behaviors that are perceived to be challenging as well as confrontational.

Perception and risk preventability making patient aware of the possible risks they are likely to face because of certain actions and preventative issues can be one of the most encouraging as well as facilitators in finding a viable solution in patient care.

Willingness to participate the general interest by the patient in engaging in a particular preventative measure can be considered to be one of the main facilitators in the creation of a suitable strategy of safety improvement.

Patient education it is definitely crucial for any health care organization to set aside a program that would ensure that is a vibrant patient education regarding a certain illness and how it can be prevented. This is a good way of ensuring that patients are aware of the risks they might be involved in.

The Importance of Benchmarking Best Practice Related To Patient Safety Performance Improvement

Primarily, it is always important of any organization particularly the healthcare industry introduce a strategy that engages all the stakeholders in with an aim of providing a technique that would improve the safety and quality of patient care. In the healthcare settings as it involves not only the care providers but also the patient. Additionally, this method encourages innovation as it involves incorporation of various ideas from other healthcare institutions (Hollnagel, 2017).

Strategies for Motivating and Engaging the Stakeholders/Staff in the Performance Improvement at All Stages

In the current business world where the nature of the market is defined by the level of competition, there is a need to come up with a better way of motivating and engaging stakeholders in your business particularly in the healthcare sector. The following are the main ways of encouraging stakeholders’ engagement in an institution (Jorsal et al., 2017).

One of the main ways to this is to demonstrate as well as coming up with a rather unique promise of a particular quality delivery. This involves building a personal brand that is capable of communicating what a company is known for.

Recognizing the Criticality of a Particular Communication Network

This can be made possible by making sure that the targeted   stakeholders are introduced to the company’s brand and various updates of any changes made to them.

References

Bogner, M. S. (2018). Human error in medicine. CRC Press.

Edwards, M. T. (2017). An organizational learning framework for patient safety. American Journal of Medical Quality, 32(2), 148-155.

Engle, R. L., Lopez, E. R., Gormley, K. E., Chan, J. A., Charns, M. P., & Lukas, C. V. (2017). What roles do middle managers play in implementation of innovative practices?. Health care management review, 42(1), 14.

Flin, R., & O’Connor, P. (2017). Safety at the sharp end: a guide to non-technical skills. CRC Press.

Frankel, A., & PGCMS, R. (2018). What leadership styles should senior nurses develop?. Risk, 10, 03.

Helmreich, R. L., & Merritt, A. C. (2017). Culture at work in aviation and medicine: National, organizational and professional influences. Routledge.

Hollnagel, E. (2017). The ETTO principle: efficiency-thoroughness trade-off: why things that go right sometimes go wrong. CRC Press.

Holmboe, E. S., Durning, S. J., & Hawkins, R. E. (2017). Practical Guide to the Evaluation of Clinical Competence E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Jorsal, A., Kistorp, C., Holmager, P., Tougaard, R. S., Nielsen, R., Hänselmann, A., … & Boesgaard, T. W. (2017). Effect of liraglutide, a glucagon?like peptide?1 analogue, on left ventricular function in stable chronic heart failure patients with and without diabetes (LIVE)—a multicentre, double?blind, randomised, placebo?controlled trial. European journal of heart failure, 19(1), 69-77.

Mathews, S. C., Demski, R., Hooper, J. E., Biddison, L. D., Berry, S. A., Petty, B. G., … & Allen, L. (2017). A model for the departmental quality management infrastructure within an academic health system. Academic Medicine, 92(5), 608-613.

Rothwell, W. J., Hohne, C. K., & King, S. B. (2018). Human performance improvement: Building practitioner performance. Routledge.

Shanafelt, T. D., & Noseworthy, J. H. (2017, January). Executive leadership and physician well-being: nine organizational strategies to promote engagement and reduce burnout. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Vol. 92, No. 1, pp. 129-146). Elsevier.

Sherwood, G., & Barnsteiner, J. (Eds.). (2017). Quality and safety in nursing: A competency approach to improving outcomes. John Wiley & Sons.

Skochelak, S. E., & Stack, S. J. (2017). Creating the medical schools of the future. Academic Medicine, 92(1), 16-19.

Spurgeon, P., Clark, J., & Ham, C. (2017). Medical leadership: from the dark side to centre stage. CRC Press.

Sylvia, M. L., & Terhaar, M. F. (2018). Clinical analytics and data management for the DNP. Springer Publishing Company.

Wager, K. A., Lee, F. W., & Glaser, J. P. (2017). Health care information systems: a practical approach for health care management. John Wiley & Sons.

Wang, Y., Kung, L., & Byrd, T. A. (2018). Big data analytics: Understanding its capabilities and potential benefits for healthcare organizations. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 126, 3-13.

Woods, D. D. (2017). Essential characteristics of resilience. In Resilience engineering (pp. 33-46). CRC Press.

Zerwekh, J., & Garneau, A. Z. (2017). Nursing Today-E-Book: Transition and Trends. Elsevier Health Sciences.