HCAD 701 Healthcare Organizational Behavior Assignment Help

Explores general concepts of organizational behavior, including the all-important area of workplace communication. We all know that communications excellence is essential for productive institutional operations, so it is fitting for this to serve as the focus of our practitioner application. Specifically, you are to place yourself in the role of Administrator for a soon-to-be-established primary care practice. Your CEO has asked you to lay the foundation for successful administrative operations. Among other things, it has been requested that you direct attention to designing a workplace communications framework which will facilitate for productive operations. As you are the administrative expert, specific decisions are your responsibility. Your task is to design and describe in detail this workplace communications framework.

Possible Deliverables for Option 3:

- Explore the importance and challenges of communication in a healthcare setting

- Describe the process of communication using a theoretical basis

- Find unique ways that communication could be improved (i.e. if you only write about memo’s you will not do well on this paper)

- Explore barriers to communication and how you will address and overcome these issues

- Address the case inquiries in full, being absolutely certain to do so not as a layperson, but as a healthcare organizational behavior expert, making sure to reference theory, findings in scholarly articles, etc. to justify your positions. Merely providing personal opinions which are unsupported is insufficient and will be grounds for failing this assignment. You must use the tools offered in your readings, coupled with those acquired by additional research, to address the case professionally.

Enrol with HCAD 701 Healthcare Organizational Behavior Assignment Help solution and homework writing services of Expertsminds.com and get better results in assignments!

Introduction

Communication is considered to be the most important aspect of a workplace. The performance and environment of the workplace is very much dependent on communication. Effective communication could be stated as a tool which allows organisations to achieve high performance culture as well as maintains a strong relationship at different levels of firms. The study sheds light on the significance of communication at the workplace. The study discusses importance as well as challenges of communication in the context of healthcare organization. The study comprises different communication theories which could be adopted by the organisation to enhance the communication. Different measures have been included in the study that is effective in overcoming the communication barriers. The organisation's needs to make sure that the care providers are practicing effective communication at the workplace.

Exploring the importance and challenges of communication in a healthcare setting

A workplace is composed of conflicts and misunderstandings which are mainly caused due to lack of communication. Communication in a healthcare setting is very essential as the care providers needs to understand the situation of the service users and they need to share the information with other care providers. Service providers need to invest energy and time for delivering valid information so that the service quality could be increased. As per the view of Kaphingst et al. (2016), communication allows to develop trust and bond with the co-workers which eventually increase individual as well as team's performance. As commented by Easley et al. (2016), organisations performance and productivity is dependent on the services providers' performance so they need to practice effective communication at a workplace. The importance of communication in a healthcare settings have been discussed below.

Team building:

The service users often work in teams for providing standard service quality to the service users. The service users have to share information about the service user's condition and medical records so that further treatment could be processed. As commented by Le Prell & Clavier (2017), Teamwork could only be achieved if the members of the teams are practicing effective communication and building effective teams is based on how the members of the team collaborate and communicate with each other. Collaborative working increases team's performance as well as service quality.

Service user's satisfaction:

Every service user has some expectations from the healthcare organisation and from the general practitioners. It is the organizations and services providers' accountability to meet service user's expectations. Service providers have to communicate with the service users so that their needs and problems could be understood. As commented by Cliffe (2016), communicating with the service users not only allows understanding the needs but also helps in motivating the service users and motivation is very essential at that phase. The self-esteem of the service users automatically decrease when their health quality decreases so it is the service provider's responsibility to keep them motivated. The service must be satisfied with the service quality and the behaviour of caretakers.

Service Quality:

The aim of the healthcare organisations is to improve the health quality of service users by providing standard service quality. The service quality depends on collaborative working and service provider's experience. As commented by Meuter et al. (2015), service users needs to share information about client's health records and problems so that health care treatment could be planned and provided to the service users The accuracy of information sharing increases due to communication and appropriate data is very essential in the healthcare settings.

Challenges of communication in the health care setting

Psychological barriers

The psychological barriers to communication mainly involve level of self-esteem, personality traits, anxiety and psychological disorders. As stated by van Rosse et al. (2016), the service provider's anxiety could become troublesome for the service users as the communication gap between the service providers and users increases. The service providers might not be able to understand the needs and problems of the service users which eventually lead to poor service quality.

When the service users are anxious about the service user's medical needs mainly due to the negative past experience and familiarity with the situation or due to the fear of rejection than the communication between both the parties gets disrupted.

Social barriers

The social barriers to communication mainly involve an individual's religion, values, culture, and roles. The social barriers also involve the laws and policies of the healthcare organisations. Communication is very reliant on culture as communication style and practice are shaped by the culture of an individual. The socio cultural background of the service providers creates an impact on the relationship between the service providers and clients. Experience and adequate qualification could overcome the communication barriers in a healthcare organisation.

Language

Language is one of the biggest communication barriers in every context, the service users could belong to any culture and religion. As per the view of McQuail, & Windahl (2015), the service users could speak any language and it is not necessary that every service user speaks English. This type of situation makes service provider's job difficult as they are unable to understand the needs and problems of service users. This is the reason workplace needs to be diverse, especially in the healthcare settings. The communication gap increases due to the difference in language between the two parties.

Describing the process of communication using a theoretical basis

The communication process could be described through theories and models and the service providers could adapt the communication theories to improve their work performance and service quality. Some of the communication theories have been discussed below which elaborates the process of communication.

Aristotle Model of communication

The model states that speaker play a key role in the communication process and the speakers needs to prepare the content by putting the thoughts and beliefs in words. As commented by McCroskey (2015), the message needs to possess some objective and the speaker needs to make sure that the meaning of the message is conveyed to the listener. The listener's responds according to the speaker's message, the model states the speakers hold the greater responsibility. The receiver is not going to be convinced if the context of the message is not clear.

Figure 1: Aristotle Model of communication

(Source: McCroskey, 2015)

Conflict is a natural phenomenon at a workplace and the service providers often disagree with the suggestion and decisions of co-workers. The service providers could use this model to enhance the communication process. Communication holds the capability of overcoming the conflicts at the workplace. Service needs to practice effective communication for developing a relation with the other members of the organisation.

Shannon and Weaver model of communication

This is the first communication model that got accepted all over the world. The model refers to the integration of concepts like messages, information sources, channel, transmitter, noise, signal, encoding, decoding, probability of error, message destination channel capacity and many others. As commented by Gillespie & Schiffman (2018), the model defines communication as a process through which one's mind affects the mind of other people. The model states that communication process composes information source, transmitter, channel, reception and destination.

Figure 2: Shannon and Weaver model of communication

(Source: Gillespie & Schiffman, 2018)

This model basically defines the communication process and most of the communication theories are based on the concept of this model. The quality of the message is often degraded by noise or external factors. The sender needs to make sure that the receiver has received the original message as during the transmission process addition content is added or some content gets deleted. The service providers need to make sure that their message does not gets affected by the external factors and noise.

Schramm's model of communication

This model is based on the roots of Shannon and Weaver model, the model states that information is useless until and unless the information is not put into words and conveyed. The speaker or the encoders has to play the bigger role as they have to initiate the communication process. The thoughts, beliefs, learning and knowledge need to convert to content (Oetzel, 2017). The speaker has to make sure that the message reaches the listener and it is listener responsibility to understand what the message and the speaker wants to convey. Until and unless the speaker is able to decode or understand the message, the information tends to be useless.

Figure 3: Schramm's model of communication

(Source: McQuail & Windahl, 2015)

Encoding and decoding are the important aspects of communication and without these two the information cannot flow between the two parties. As per the view of McQuail & Windahl (2015), the communication process tends to be incomplete if the speaker has not received any feedback from the listener. Without any feedback, the speaker is not going to understand whether the listener has understood the meaning of the message. So communication process is incomplete without a feedback from the receiver end.

The service providers of the health care organisation would adopt and learn from this model about the process and components of communication. The service providers need to practice effective communication for increasing the service quality and individual performance.  

Unique ways that can be followed to improve communication

As per the views of Lo'ai et al. (2016), the aim of improving communication is to ease out the process of cooperative working, responsibility sharing, solving the problems and decision making within the organization to provide satisfactory healthcare services to the client and ensuring efficiency within the operational management process. This collaborative learning is required between the nurses', physicians and other healthcare professionals in order to increase awareness about each other's level of knowledge and skills that leads to improved decision making. There are different and unique ways that can be followed to improve communication between these entities.

Delivering critical information in a timely way:

The responsibility of an administrator is to bridge communication between nurses and the physicians first. Therefore, administrator can adopt different kinds of tools along with the memo that can help improving communication between every stakeholder of the organization. In order to make the communication process effective, different conventional tools such as e-mails, letters and others can be used. As per the views of Foronda et al. (2016), often it becomes difficult to conduct a face to face communication between the physicians and nurses, in these cases voice recordings and video conferencing can be used to share ideas or planning with each other. Another way to maintain good communication with stakeholders is Onescape cloud contact that provides an opportunity to the administrator to make direct calls to the targeted team members. Moreover this tool assists for conducting automated functions such as admission and cancellation of admission. Additionally, health consultations can also be performed through this platform.

Choosing the right tools:

Making flawless decisions about healthcare services and to share those with concerned team members of the organization requires right tools should be chosen (Foronda et al. 2016). The staff should be allowed to make better decisions by collaborating with each other and the administrator is responsible to ensure this collaboration by choosing the right tool for the right people. Effective communication can be achieved through using plain and simple languages as the care users and the non-clinical staffs of the organization are also involved in the process. Therefore, Techback method can be used in this process. This tool provides opportunity to learn the principles of simple terminologies and assist in system changes that is necessary to promote consistency of the communication.
 
Using memo:

In a healthcare setting memorandum is used to address the problems that are faced by the staff members due to lack of proper communication strategy applied. The organizational administrator needs to communicate the changes that has been planned to implement in order to make the healthcare process more effective. These changes can be communicated through the memorandum. The memorandum is expected to be evidence based explaining the impacts caused due to the issue. For instance, when a new service is adopted, the staff members can be made aware of implementation process, rules to be followed and the cost that has been invested to implement the service through the memorandum.

SBAR four part communication toolkit:

Effective communication can be achieved through the implementation of Situation-Background-Assessment-recommendation (SBAR) communication tool. This tool directs the communicators to share necessary information about their experiences about a patient and the required actions that can be taken by them as well as by others. The nurse care managers can identify the "situation" by observing the care user and by taking history of the care user. In this way the present position of the care users and the required services can be outlined. As per the views of Huggins et al. (2016), after the situation is identified the "background" information of the clients can be shared by the clinicians to decide upon the next steps to be taken. For instance, at the time of discharge a significant positive change in the care users health and behaviour should be identified. Analysing the situation and the background of the patient necessary "assessments" is conducted by the clinicians. As commented by Qi et al. (2017), in this process other responsible staffs are also made aware of their service requirements. Clinical requests are made after the assessment process through "recommendation" and required actions are taken into account. For instance, the patient care manager can recommend the physician to order medication of pain management before starting the physiotherapy. This process makes it easier to conduct the therapy sessions and the process is completed within a timeframe.

Exploration of the barriers in communication and the process implemented for addressing and overcoming those issues
There are different barriers that prevent an organization to work collaboratively. However, as opined by Sawyer (2016), the role of an administrator is to identify and define those barriers to overcome those for the sake of delivering effective healthcare services. Different kinds of barriers and the process of identifying and overcoming those barriers are discussed in this section.

Cultural differences:

Health professionals are often observed to work autonomously in the organization though they identify themselves as a part of the team. In a primary care practice, staff from different cultural backgrounds work together. The nurses, surgeons and the physicians may hold different perceptions about their roles and responsibilities due to the cultural difference Thorne et al. (2018). Thus, they may hold different goals for caring one particular care user. For instance, being from different cultures some physicians may share assertive and challenging opinions openly. Therefore, nurses may comply with the physician even if they find something wrong in the services. As commented by Thorne et al. (2018), in order to address this, the actions that have been taken by each staff should be evaluated carefully and gap of these actions should be noted. However, to overcome this situation, regular and routine communication can be followed. Moreover, each of the staffs should be clearly informed about their responsibilities. Every staff member should be encouraged to share their views and opinions and the environment should not be punitive.

Gap of generation:

The organization consists of staff members that possess different characteristics and each generation can hold different perceptions about other generations. For instance millennial can be perceived as not-motivated and lazy. This stereotype create barrier in communication between the staff members. As per the views of Moore et al. (2017), his can be identified by studying the communication pattern and the frequency of communication between each generation. However, the administrator can bring all the staff members including the generation Y and the generation X under a single shade by make them motivated to identify the strengths of each of the generations. The generation Y should admit the strength of experience of the generation X and the latter should address the strength of innovative mindset of the generation Y.

The hierarchical culture:

At the time of talking about the organizational hierarchy, in primary patient care setting physicians are in the top position in the organization. Due to this fact, often the nurses and other staff of the organization feel that there are problems in communication while the physicians do not feel the same Dubb et al. (2016). This problem can be identified when the staffs in the lower level of hierarchy is observed to feel uncomfortable to share their concerns and problems. Moreover, the staff members in the lower level of hierarchy may consider themselves as incompetent. This problem can be overcome through making the physicians aware of their behavioural conduct. Physicians should be instructed to communicate about the patient care planning with every concerned staff so that they can identify their importance in the service.

Competition among staff members:

As per the views of Dubb et al. (2016), often the staff members are observed to be engaged in unnecessary and unhealthy competition between each other that hampers the communication process. This can be addressed through identifying the problems faced by the care users. For instance, the staff responsible for managing the discharge process may remain unaware of the date of discharge because of the tendency of the physician not to share necessary information. This may create confusion among the care users and their family members. The administrator's role in overcoming this situation is to make the staff aware of the positive side of working collaboratively. The improvements in services while working in groups should be recognized by the administration which would work as an incentive of collaborative work.

Conclusion

The study has been conducted to identify the role of an administrator of the healthcare that deals with primary care practice. Collaborative working and communication in the healthcare setting is necessary to provide quality services to the care users. Building an effective team in healthcare setting is very important to provide quality services to the care users. Along with this the satisfaction of the care users are important for organizational success. However, there are different challenges in communication that is faced in an organization namely the psychological barrier, social barrier language and others. The process of communication has been enumerated through implementation of theories such as Aristotle Model of communication, Shannon and Weaver model of communication and Schramm's model of communication. Additionally, the effective tools and their implementation process have been described in the study. Moreover, the barriers in communication in a healthcare setting and the process of overcoming those barriers are also described.

Dont miss your chance to excel in HCAD 701 Healthcare Organizational Behavior Assignment Help solution assignment! Hire tutor of Expertsminds.com for perfectly written assignment solutions!