Work Environment Improvement Approaches

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Discussion
Concepts of Civil Workspace Environment
Strategies for Building High-Performance Interprofessional Teams
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Healthcare organizations always try to maintain and develop a healthy and civil workspace environment that provides clear and efficient communication among employees and leadership. The general policy is closely connected with employees’ community, retention, and overall job satisfaction. It helps resolve any problems and conflicts that may appear in a workspace. Thus, it is crucial to support a healthy and civil workspace environment.

Discussion

According to the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory, my workspace environment is rated as having a mildly healthy work environment. Due to the findings, specific neutral and somewhat positive elements are enhanced to create a more beneficial experience. Still, no entirely disagreed parts may be characterized as unhealthy or stressful.

Despite having a generally good perspective, there were not many features I could firmly declare to be entirely positive. Even though I believe the workplace to have a civil atmosphere, I never anticipated it to be just above the proper level. Moreover, the Assessment made me realize that some aspects needed to be improved. I had assumed that employees who shared the same goal and trusted one another would be more involved in collaborative activities or decision-making. Lack of benefits and competitional salaries interfere with the intention of leadership to create a firm employee community with talented workers. Before the Assessment, I was confident that my workplace’s environment was generally positive, and I knew this to be the case. The Assessment demonstrated that I had no significant disagreements with any points.

The results propose that, even though the general atmosphere of health and civility is normal, it still needs more than twenty points to realize the level of a very healthy and civil environment. Other than that, a few aspects require special consideration to move forward with the situation. Therefore, the studied works provide strategies and methods to increase productivity alongside a healthy and civil workplace environment.

Concepts of Civil Workspace Environment

Defining the most positive work experience has become a problem over the last thirty years. Different scholars researched ways of preventing and dealing with harmful situations in the healthcare sphere. Among them, Olender (2011), Clark (2019), and Griffin (2014) pointed out and developed theoretical and practical fields of strategies that improve the work atmosphere for nurses. Different approaches study healthy environments in the workplace, many of which include various types of uncivil encounters. Griffin (2014) identifies the following problems among coworkers: incivility, bullying, and workplace mobbing. Each of them affects personal experience and influences teamwork and the organization. All scholars defy the issue as the lack of practical knowledge on managing such situations and the constant high stress level.

According to the Nurse Leaders’ Survey, realized by Clark and Olender (2011), implementing stress reduction strategies is one of the critical concepts of providing a healthy work environment. It offers a more personal approach to the problem, including spending time with family and friends, a regular workout routine, quality sleep, and healthy eating habits. Besides that, as a collective practice, empathy, higher collaboration, and conflict resolution should be applied as a work policy.

Other studies by Griffin and Clark (2014) and later further development of the concept by Clark (2019) involve a more functional view of resolving stressful and uncivil situations. The first work explores Cognitive Rehearsal (CR) as an approach to prevent and stop horizontal violence and lateral violence. The later study examines the CR by combining it with other techniques such as evidence-based scripting and debriefing simulated scenarios. Role-playing prepared scenarios with a mentor increases the efficiency of uncivil encounters’ resolution and prepares nurses to face an unhealthy environment with higher stress resistance. The mentioned research focuses on conversation practices, preparatory reading, and building skills for managing harmful encounters.

Concerning my work environment, explored studies provide new methods to resolve problems, such as creating a mentoring program and incorporating a collective experience, which will increase the value of partnerships and individual workers. While working in a critical care unit in an acute care hospital, there is no means to implement the whole range of CR practices with scenarios and role play. However, there is still a need for increasing collaboration strategies. The concept of a collaborative vision and partnership provided by Clark and Olender (2011) may be applied to my workspace to resolve the problem with the mentoring program by providing a new one with an emphasis on civility and teamwork. Assigning mentors for the newly licensed workers would ensure faster learning and civility understanding based on positive role modeling. Consequently, this would create more comprehensive, well-defined policies that focus on civility by exchanging experiences.

Besides that, to develop stronger work teams, identifying and describing uncivil encounters as a part of CR may be used. The difference between an educational and practical approach is addressing real situations among workers. Debriefing harmful encounters would ensure discussion of the actions, thought processes, and reflection of those actions to incorporate improvement into future encounters (Clark, 2019). My workspace environment would become healthier and more civil by resolving such problems and building means to prevent future accidents.

Strategies for Building High-Performance Interprofessional Teams

The work in the critical care unit has a high workload and demands more concentration and energy, which may result in higher stress and anxiety. Management in such a case is responsible for providing dignified conditions and a work environment that will encourage nurses to strive to be their best. There are issues with my Work Environment Assessment related more to leadership than problems within the team. Studied works provide several ways to resolve issues with the reward and compensation system and recruitment of prospective employees.

According to Clark and Olender (2011), nurse leaders must be very supportive of the success of the nursing practice to create and sustain a healthy work environment. It must be secured by the foundational documents and policies of the hospital. Each member of the healthcare team has to be valued and appreciated. In the case, for instance, of creating a working mentoring program, mentors should teach and show respect to new nurses and be rewarded with benefits for helping others and sharing their experiences.

The evidence-based strategy of Cognitive Rehearsal may also be used as an intervention for management by nurses (Clark, 2019). Confronting the leaders about unfair treatment or disregarded achievements and efforts would allow workers to speak their thoughts and receive feedback openly. Rehearsed phrases and situations help to overcome the fear of arguing with management. Therefore, such a practice would encourage communication between hospital workers and leadership, which would increase members’ skills and opinion value, which is secured by the program of rewards from the previous strategy.

Other aspects of my Assessment are relatively positive; the cooperation and relations within the group are healthy; however, there is always a place for improvement. Though there is no need to use CR for intervention among nurses, it may still be implemented as a primary prevention tool. Management has to apply the following points to prevent cases of incivility (Griffin & Clark, 2014). Leaders must secure relevant regulations, such as vision, philosophy, and values, in the fundamental documents mentioned in the previous paragraphs. These regulations must be shared and embraced by all working. Nurses must commit to focusing on patient care and safety and avoid further uncivil encounters. To create behavioral norms, for instance, no gossiping, discussing problems in private, giving positive feedback, respecting others, having a positive and “can-do” attitude, assisting others, and responding to patients promptly. Implying and following the mentioned points ensures a higher civility score and prevents further unhealthy interactions.

The other approach may be applied to address heavy workload and stress. Cognitive Rehearsal, in this case, is a strategy to prepare for a stressful encounter by rehearsing specific phrases that might be used during the meeting and being coached by someone (Clark, 2019). It may be used to rehearse stressful situations with patients and during heavy workloads. For instance, preparing scenarios of encounters with patients during mentoring would help lower work stress levels. Considering the algorithm of work and phrases would make it easier to proceed from one task to another, saving more energy. Therefore, the CR may be used to develop a better workspace environment in acute care hospitals.

Conclusion

So, even though my Work Environment Assessment does not have a perfect civility score, there are no serious issues. However, the studied works provide several approaches and strategies to improve the existing situation. Scholars developed working algorithms for preventing uncivil interactions and managing them if problems occur. Hence, cognitive rehearsal management can enhance the quality of civility in the workspace and imply open policy to improve collective relations and individual development.

References

Clark, C. M. (2019). Combining cognitive rehearsal, simulation, and evidence-based scripting to address incivility.Nurse Educator, 44 (2), 64-68. Web.

Clark, C. M., Olender, L., Cardoni, C. & Kenski, D. (2011). Fostering civility in nursing education and practice.JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 41(7/8), 324-330. Web.

Griffin, M. & Clark, C. M. (2014). Revisiting cognitive rehearsal as an intervention against incivility and lateral violence in nursing: 10 years later.The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 45(12), 535-542. Web.

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