HR Management at the Patient Care Hospital

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Table of Contents

Evaluating the resourcing process at the hospital
Recommendations for resourcing patient carers
References

Evaluating the resourcing process at the hospital

It is indeed factual that the resourcing process at the Patient Care Hospital needs to be updated and validated according to government standards. As it stands now, it is evident that adequate thought and focus have not been given to the roles and responsibilities of patient carers.

For instance, a turn over rate of 50 percent per year is quite high. It appears that most employees who take up jobs as patient carers are usually not committed to serve for long in the division in spite of the impressive perks associated with the job.

Second, the recruitment and selection criteria used to hire patient carers lack pertinent details. The standard procedure being used to hire the carers does not screen the job seekers well. As a matter of fact, the detailed forms to be filled during the interview process do not feature inherent personality traits of job seekers.

Needless to say, a patient carer should be an individual who is wiling at heart to serve patients without ridiculing or handing them in an uncouth manner. Such individuals should also be trustworthy, honest, passionate and compassionate enough to patients.

Apart from the desire to secure the job, patient carers are supposed to be selfless characters who are not quick to judge or rebuke whenever provoked. Unfortunately, the current selection criteria does not put into account such personal attributes. Worse still, malpractices such as trading patients is common at the hospital facility.

As a result, it is not possible to track down carers who mistreat or manhandle patients even if they wear name tags for identification. In any case, most patients are usually not in the best of their physical or mental status when receiving treatment or during discharge period from the hospital.

Third, the recruitment and selection process for carers does not seem to highlight the significance of ethical practice at workplace. Employees are merely supposed to retain the good image and reputation of the hospital. Ethical standards for patient carers are not in place.

The rigid nature of the interview process is a major weakness in the resourcing process at the hospital. Filling forms without obtaining recommendation letters for individuals who know the applicants results into an incomplete recruitment process for job seekers.

Nonetheless, the orientation program that patient carers go through after selection is a major boost in the job induction process. In addition, training these employees while on the job is prudent because it improves their input at work and equally enhances a positive relationship with patients. Capacity building and training is supposed to be an on-going process in the tenure of an employee.

While communication plays a crucial role in building positive relationships between patients and their carers, it is vital to inquire whether patients know how to communicate with their caregivers and vice versa. In addressing the nature of communication relationships that exist between patients and carers, it is necessary to takes stock of the prevailing situation by conducting a survey in collaboration with rest of the hospital community.

In an ideal situation, most of the patients should be able to trust their caregivers (Tzeng & Yin, 2009). From the outset, it is apparent that proper communication lacks between patients and the management of the hospital. Communication is the foundation of a good relationship.

The resourcing process does not investigate the interpersonal and inter-personal communication skills of job seekers during the interview. Recruitment of these staff members does not shed light on the carer-patient relationship. A relationship based on listening and trust is apparently missing among most of the carers at the hospital.

When questioned, medical professionals emphasize that patient-provider relationships are based in particular on listening, patient, trust, respect, time or dialogue. In turn, patients note that are essential trust, communication, listening, empathy, time and respect.

Hence, the process of resourcing these workers definitely requires major improvements along personality traits and training background. Despite a positive feeling that the hospital facility is performing quite well in serving the elite segment of the community, effective communication is definitely missing.

Recommendations for resourcing patient carers

Patient carers in hospitals are exclusively charged with the role of ensuring the physical and moral comfort of patients. On a regular basis, they assist patients to accomplish simple chores like visiting the toilet and dressing. From the case study of Patient Care Hospital, the Human Resource Department should embrace and adopt alternative hiring process for patient carers in order to improve delivery of care to patients (Hepworth, 2004).

Rise the education threshold for applicants

Although the patient carer job requires, physical strength and passion, education background of an individual is of great importance. The Human Resource Management at the hospital has been hiring even the high school graduates as patient carers. Adequate college education preferably within the discipline of social services is highly preferable.

It is possible to identify several differences between trained and untrained individuals at workplace. Any form of successful professional development requires articulate training. First, training is closely associated with the idea of professional development that occurs through multiple forms.

In addition, training primarily serves the need for continuous professional development at workplace. Although patient carers are oriented and trained while on the job, it is still necessary to hire people who are already trained in relevant fields. Professional development takes place when there is a combination of formal and informal processes.

A patient carer is not subject to handling just a single issue at workplace. It is a dynamic role that demands critical thinking skills (Krishnan & Singh, 2011). Training before employment should be viewed in a broader sense by the management of the hospital than it is the case at the present time.

In fact, there is no incompatibility between the ideas of training and professional development required by patient carers. Training can be envisaged in order to promote the professional development of patient carers. Individuals who have been trained before being employed are well prepared in several elements of knowledge management.

The latter refers to of processes executed by an organization in order to develop, harness, manage, share and apply knowledge with the aim of attaining the desired strategic goals. Knowledge management should not be a preserve of vocational training colleges. The Human Resource management department at the Patient Care hospital should develop its unique knowledge management program to improve the performance of patient carers.

The increased market competition requires both private and public organizations to be flexible and adapt very quickly to the environment in constantly in motion. in this context, the hospital’s human resource department must be able to quickly mobilize its intellectual capital knowledge in order to cope with the changing demands of the market and their clients (Lucke et al., 2008).

Training is a fundamental tool that can satisfactorily equip employees with skills required to perform their duties. Since the patient carer job at the hospital facility does not requite any skills and professional training, it is highly likely that this team of workers lack requisite skills to perform their duties.

Orientation and on-the-job training may not be sufficient to equip this group of employees. Most workers recruited to work in organization often face limited skills as much as they excelled during the interview process. Quite a large number acquire skills and competences skills through conventional training.

This makes their abilities not to comply with the workplace demands. It is erroneous for Patient Care Hospital to recruit patient carers on the basis of their academic credentials. Most of them often ignore pertinent concepts learnt in schools and as a result, experience stagnation in their personal career growth and development (Iecovich, Rabin & Penchak, 2014).

Improve recruitment and selection process

The current recruitment process for patient carers at the hospital is done haphazardly without clear guidelines. This explains why several cases of complaints from patents have been reported by patients (Vecchio, 2008). Appropriate criteria for selecting job applicants should be followed by the human resource management.

This implies that employee selection should not just entail application and filling forms. As already hinted out in the evaluation section, it is not possible to assess the personality traits of applicants with the current selection criteria. The interview forms and questions contained in them should be restructured in such a way that the character traits of applicants can be captured.

In particular, questions should be formulated in such a way that the emotions of job applicants can come out vividly. The fact that patient carers deal with patients who may not be emotionally stable, they should be comprised of workers who are resilient enough.

In addition, the employee development goals and staffing model being used by the human resource management ought to be revisited and appropriate reforms implemented. For example, the issue of trading patients is a clear indication that adequate supervision of patient carers is not in place.

The supervisory staff should be qualified in the course of delivering their duties. Recruiting incompetent supervisors compounds the current challenge being experienced by the hospital (Reader & Gillespie, 2013). Improving the recruitment and selection criteria also involves fair employment practices.

The human resource management should demonstrate commitment to hire job applicants who truly qualify as patient carers. For instance, job applicants are sometimes referred or recommended by friends even though they do not qualify. This demonstrates lack of commitment to deliver the most competent workers at any given time.

Workplace guidelines and other employment ethics should be part and parcel of processes required when resourcing for patient carers. Reference checks, background investigations and pre-employment standards should be envisioned when applicants are being interviewed for the position of patient carer (Prowse & Prowse, 2010).

As much as the focus has been on patient carers, it is also crucial to underscore the fact that a qualified interviewing staff should not be left out in the discussion. Members of the interviewing panel who do not understand the best practices can negatively contribute towards the quality of job seekers who eventually join the hospital facility as patient carers (Griggs, 2006).

Hence, resourcing competent patient carers should begin by a competent team of interview panel. In this case, the human resource department should put in place an employment manager who is well versed with the needs of the hospital organization when it comes to giving care to patients.

Alternatively, the recruitment and selection process should be facilitated by a human resource manager who has the ability to harmonize the process and ensure a thorough as well as efficient recruitment process. This calls for adequate experience in the same area. Moreover, equal employment opportunity legislations also affect the quality of recruitment when selecting job applicants (Stirling, Dwan & McKenzie, 2014).

Ability and motivation factors can also be used by the Human Resource management at Patent Care Hospital to resource for the most qualified workers. Personal aptitude can only be enhanced through the available resources of an organization Organizations should develop the desires commitment and motivation to train and enhance development of employees.

The latter can assist the management to minimize weaknesses inherent in the employees. Minor weaknesses in performance can be minimized through training. Other than weak selection methods, there are other factors that contribute to poor performance at the Patient Care Hospital Therefore, before employees embark on training and development processes; there is a need to diagnose these factors.

Some of the most likely challenges hampering performance include the tight schedule of most of the carers who are mostly students, low aptitude and lack of consistent workplace improvement at the hospital (Hanratty et al., 2012).

It can also be argued that the challenge with the hospital’s current operation platform is that the application form does not contain relevant inquiries that are necessary for assessing applicants for patient carer job. The questions that should offer sufficient information on the hidden qualities of an applicant are not present.

As part of the recruitment process, every job applicant ought to avail recommendation letters from professional individuals who fully understand them. These can assist in focusing the prospective employee’s character traits. Patient carers need some mental and physical talent. The job demands the ability to be always courteous and polite.

Job analysis ought to be done on the position of patient carer in order to establish attitudes that are instrumental in successful care for patients. When the job analysis has been accomplished, questions can be created to weigh the critical attributes. The test questions should also be offered to the current carers so that it can be possible to validate the effectiveness of the procedure (Gray & Edwards, 2009).

Past empirical studies have demonstrated that training, development and capacity building can be used to improve selection process in an organization. The merits of training cannot be over emphasized at this point. After selecting patient carers, the management of this pool of employees comes in handy in ensuring effective delivery of services to patients.

As a matter of fact, training does not merely improve financial outcomes and performance. Adequate training of employees at workplace boosts performance intensity of the workforce. In addition, development in this context entails irreversible improvement of knowledge and skills within the organization’s workforce. In a similar way to training, capacity building for employees is indeed fundamental in elevating performance on a daily basis.

An organization like the Patient Care Hospital has not put in place effective strategies for selecting and recruiting a qualified workforce within the patient carer division. As a result, a weak selection procedure currently dominates the process of resourcing patient carers. Some organizations use a single strategy such as intelligence quotient (IQ) to select the most qualified job applicants.

However, a single selection criterion is prone to wrong conclusions. The latter is the same reality depicted at the Patient Care Hospital since job seekers are only required to fill the interview form (Hurst, 1997). There is no genuine selection criterion for recruiting employees in an organization.

This is due to the fact that the notable strategies used do not consider the fact that human beings have got different abilities despite the similarities in their assessment results. There are hidden abilities that can not be identified through use of selection standards. For instance, there are aspects such as behavior, ethics, mentality, morals and determinations that can not be evaluated through some standards.

This fact proves that all modes of recruitment are weak and hence intervention measures should be made to overcome impending bias (Brauns, 2013). Unlike recruitment that is restricted to specific attributes, training and development processes are diverse making it possible to address personal issues.

Eventually, these processes increase worker’s confidence, esteem, self-control, understanding, motivation and interpersonal skills. From a careful analysis of literature, most organizations select employees basing on their fields of specialization. In this case, there are numerous posts such as leadership, management, operators and technicians.

Nevertheless, due to diverse changes in organizations, there is need for an individual to have multiple skills in order to execute services in more than three posts. Therefore, training and developments enhance a multidimensional ability to perform diverse duties, a factor that has a lot of competitive advantaged for the organizational performance.

There are numerous challenges faced by organizations trying to assimilate workers with diverse mindsets. Luck of emotional maturity, morals and confidence needs great training development extending far beyond concepts learnt in classroom (You, Dunt, Doyle & Hsueh, 2012.

References

Brauns, M. 2013, “Aligning Strategic Human Resource Management To Human Resources, Performance And Reward”, The International Business & Economics Research Journal (Online), vol. 12, no. 11, pp. 1405-n/a.

Gray, M. & Edwards, B. 2009, “Determinants of the Labour Force Status of Female Carers”, Australian Journal of Labour Economics, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 5-20.

Griggs, S. 2006, “Speaking for patients and carers. Health consumer groups and the policy process”, Public Administration, vol. 84, no. 3, pp. 803-806.

Hanratty, B., Lowson, E., Holmes, L., Addington-Hall, J., Arthur, A., Grande, G., Payne, S. & Seymour, J. 2012, “A comparison of strategies to recruit older patients and carers to end-of-life research in primary care”, BMC Health Services Research, vol. 12, pp. 342.

Hepworth, M. 2004, “A framework for understanding user requirements for an information service: Defining the needs of informal carers”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 55, no. 8, pp. 695-708.

Hurst, K. 1997, “Multi-skilled health carers: nature, purpose and implications”, Health manpower management, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 197-211.

Iecovich, E., Rabin, B. & Penchak, M. 2014, “Hospital Policies and Nurses’Attitudes in Israel towards Paid carers’ Tasks during Patient Hospitalization”, Canadian Journal on Aging, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 185-95.

Krishnan, S.K. & Singh, M. 2011, “Strategic Human Resource Management: A Three-Stage Process Model and Its Influencing Factors”, South Asian Journal of Management, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 60-82.

Lucke, J., Russell, A., Tooth, L., Lee, C., Watson, M., Byrne, G., Wilson, A. & Dobson, A. 2008, “Few urban-rural differences in older carers’ access to community services”, Australian Health Review, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 684-90.

Prowse, P. & Prowse, J. 2010, “Whatever happened to human resource management performance?”, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 145-162.

Reader, T.W. & Gillespie, A. 2013, “Patient neglect in healthcare institutions: a systematic review and conceptual model”, BMC Health Services Research, vol. 13, pp. 156.

Stirling, C.M., Dwan, C.A. & McKenzie, A.R. 2014, “Why carers use adult day respite: a mixed method case study”, BMC Health Services Research, vol. 14, pp. 245.

Tzeng, H. & Yin, C. 2009, “Historical Trends in Human Resource Issues of Hospital Nursing in the Past Generation”, Nursing Economics, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 19-25.

Vecchio, N. 2008, “Understanding the use of respite services among informal carers”, Australian Health Review, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 459-67.

You, E.C., Dunt, D., Doyle, C. & Hsueh, A. 2012, “Effects of case management in community aged care on client and carer outcomes: a systematic review of randomized trials and comparative observational studies”, BMC Health Services Research, vol. 12, pp. 395.

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