Discussion: Workplace Environment Assessment
NURS 6053: Workplace Environment Assessment
NURS 6053: Workplace Environment Assessment

Discussion: Workplace Environment Assessment

How healthy is your workplace?

You may think your current organization operates seamlessly, or you may feel it has many issues. You may experience or even observe things that give you pause. Yet, much as you wouldn’t try to determine the health of a patient through mere observation, you should not attempt to gauge the health of your work environment based on observation and opinion. Often, there are issues you perceive as problems that others do not; similarly, issues may run much deeper than leadership recognizes. NURS 6053: Workplace Environment Assessment

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There are many factors and measures that may impact organizational health. Among these is civility. While an organization can institute policies designed to promote such things as civility, how can it be sure these are managed effectively? In this Discussion, you will examine the use of tools in measuring workplace civility.

To Prepare:

Review the Resources and examine the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory, found on page 20 of Clark (2015).

Review and complete the Work Environment Assessment Template in the Resources.

By Day 3 of Week 7

Post a brief description of the results of your Work Environment Assessment. Based on the results, how civil is your workplace? Explain why your workplace is or is not civil. Then, describe a situation where you have experienced incivility in the workplace. How was this addressed? Be specific and provide examples.NURS 6053: Workplace Environment Assessment

The Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory is a critical tool in assessing the health of a workplace (Clark, 2015). Prior to utilizing this tool, I had assumed that my workplace is one healthy environment until I looked at it through the lens of the inventory. I also learned in the course of my career that the tool enjoys the support of healthcare staff, increases the morale of employees and impacts on low employee turnover (Clark et al, 2016). I was reminded even as I filled out the information in the inventory, of the different times I had witnessed conflict but seemed to brush it off. Although the incidences were not common and were far between, they still made for a case to have the situation change. One of the inventory sections calls for reflection on communication levels within the organization as being respectful, direct, or transparent. At this point, I recalled an incident where three nurses were involved in an exchange of words following miscommunication during shift handover. Although the situation was finally resolved, it brought to question how well staff communicates during handover as well as in other aspects of patient care. I had to put a score of 3 in this parameter.

The other queries in the inventory got between a 3 and 5 in scores. The total final score was 86 which was in my opinion, reflective of my workplace. I know the workplace can do much better than it is currently. The main issue is the lack of clear communication channels. The dominant management style is that of top-down where those in authority are charged with giving information and instructions to the subordinates to follow. As pointed out by Heyden et al., (2017) and witnessed in my workplace, often because of fear of repercussions, the lower rank staff does not voice their opinions and instead choose to murmur in the background. The organization is not conducive for feedback to be enhanced. This is a major setback as I believe that all persons in a team have ideas, suggestions, and views that they can share and which can improve work efficiency.NURS 6053: Workplace Environment Assessment

Although team buildings are organized once a year, I feel that more could be done. One incident that took place in the workplace made me come to this conclusion. The general attitude in the workplace was where older nurses tended to use disrespectful language to the newer staff. The former often used degrading language and openly scolded the latter for genuine mistakes they made. This kind of incivility had become an almost accepted culture in my workplace. The newer staff was supposed to ‘man up’ and soldier on through the ‘boot camp’ first year of work. However, this was not only wrong but it was also a major cause of low morale and demotivation of the newer staff. It was during one such event when an older nurse called a newer staff ‘a moron’ for failing to insert an IV correctly in a patient. The patient happened to have heard the degrading remark and demanded to talk to the hospital management. Needless to say, a staff meeting was called the very next day and the management was displeased by the fact that an experienced nurse would lack the decency to restrain her tongue in the presence of a patient and worse still, degrade a qualified RN. At this point, the management demanded that nurses write down the challenges they face and these were discussed openly. Because there was anonymity when writing down the issues, nurses were able to be candid about their problems. It was resolved in the meeting that any form of incivility would be met with immediate suspension pending investigation of the offending person. In the long run, the stern action that was pronounced seemed to be effective because no more incidences of incivility were reported, The meeting was later followed by a two-week training session for all staff on workplace ethics and which highlighted the negative effects of incivility on team morale as well as on patient outcomes. NURS 6053: Workplace Environment Assessment

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In conclusion, it is unfortunate when team members purposefully make it hard for others to work and even worse when patients have to witness discord between team members. The Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory should be utilized in healthcare facilities to ensure that the working environment is conducive to work and that patients receive the best of care from a motivated team.

References

Clark, C. M. (2015). Conversations to inspire and promote a more civil workplace. American Nurse Today, 10(11), 18-23.

Clark, C. M., Sattler, V. P., & Barbosa-Leiker, C. (2016). Development and testing of the healthy work environment inventory: a reliable tool for assessing work environment health and satisfaction. Journal of Nursing Education, 55(10), 555-562.

Heyden, M. L., Fourné, S. P., Koene, B. A., Werkman, R., & Ansari, S. (2017). Rethinking ‘top‐down’and ‘bottom‐up’roles of top and middle managers in organizational change: Implications for employee support. Journal of Management Studies, 54(7), 961-985. NURS 6053: Workplace Environment Assessment