Nursing Management Case Study

1 Introduction

Change is an inevitable part of life. In this ever changing society, it is important that nurses change practices in a bid to improve on quality care rendered to patients. “Nursing management is the coordination and integration of nursing resources to accomplish care and provision through application of the management process” stated Huber (2006) in her book. A good management team plays an important role in the function and continuity of any organization.

In this essay, I will analyse the management role and style involved when implementing change in my area of practice. I will discuss about the leadership style adopted during the change process.

2 Area of Practice

Hospital X’s mission is to provide high quality yet cost-effective

Ward based discharge nurse and I were placed in charge to orientate the ward nurses. Senior clerk to the other clerks. Registrar to medical officers and pharmacist to his or her colleges. We created an obtainable target which was to discharge patients by 1300Hrs. We then encouraged and convinced the staff it was possible to discharge patients by 1300Hrs. The staff who obtained the highest percentage in performing patient discharges by 1300Hrs, was announced of their good work publicly during ward meeting which was held every 25th of every month and gift vouchers were given as short term wins. It is during this ward meeting where the consolidated results of the project is discussed. We then maintained the change by officially introducing the new workflow based on its achievability.

3.2 Change Transition Model

When change is brought about, it is norm for people to resist and oppose it. It is important to understand what people feel which will enable us to guide them aiming for them to accept and support the change (Bridges 2009). With reference to William Bridges transition model (2009), refer to Figure 2.

Stage 1: Ending, Losing, Letting Go – staffs entered this stage when the new discharge workflow was first introduced. Staffs were resistant as they were comfortable with the current workflow. Guiding the nurses through this stage, my nurse manager listened her staffs’ thoughts and feelings

Weber’s bureaucratic principles states that an organization should have written rules, hierarchy of authority, system of task relationships and fair evaluation and reward. Refer to Figure 4 below. Explaining Weber’s bureaucratic principles, authority should be clearly defined as this would allow the managers to supervise and control their subordinates in an organization. Rules and regulations should be clearly specified in form of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to ensure that activities are performed in a particular manner which will facilitate coordination. Position and duties should be clearly specified, this would allow employees to know what is expected of them based on their expertise. To avoid favoritism and personal prejudice between managers and subordinates, managers should maintain a professional impersonal relationship as to not influence decision making. Hiring, assignment allocation and promotion should be based on the employees’ competency as this is the main characteristic of a bureaucratic organization. There should be a standardized system in place when selecting and evaluating staffs as to ensure that employees are fairly and equally rewarded when seen