Health Care Culture Essay

Health Care Culture Essay

Health Care Culture

Health care organizations’ primary mandate is ensuring that patients receive care that meets patients’ specific needs. As a result, they must adopt systems and promote proper practices and cultures. Patients should always feel safe when seeking care, and health care providers should be motivated to achieve the desired goals. A health care culture focusing on excellence and safety is critical to attaining patient needs. All stakeholders should also be actively involved in the health care process and play their roles meticulously. The purpose of this paper is to discuss health care culture and the principles for building a culture of excellence and safety, stakeholders’ role in improving health care culture, and application of Christian Worldview principles.

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Health Care Culture, Culture of Excellence and Safety

From a social dimension, a culture is a way of life. Its defining elements include norms, behaviors, and values that bring people together. A health care culture involves behavioral patterns, values, and beliefs characterizing the everyday practice of the health care system (Mannion & Davies, 2018). It involves organizational practices that vary across organizations for delivering health care to patients and populations. A culture of excellence is dominated by the pursuit to achieve unprecedented results and avoiding average performance as much as possible. In a culture of excellence, health care organizations use a system-wide approach to working where everybody is involved in setting and delivering measurable goals. Achieving quality care is the primary goal through guidance from forward-thinking leaders (Toussaint, 2018). On the other hand, a culture of safety involves an organization’s norms and practices that support and promote patient safety. Such a culture influences behaviors and actions that prevent patient harm (ECRI, 2019). The primary goal is to maintain a safe work environment by adopting adequate and relevant safety programs.

Principles for Building a Culture of Excellence and Safety

A culture of excellence and safety is vital for health care organizations to optimize patient outcomes. An example of principles for building such a culture is the commitment to quality improvement. In health practice, quality improvement involves standardizing processes and structure to improve patient outcomes and reduce variations in results (Mannion & Davies, 2018). Accordingly, health care organizations examine their performance progressively to determine practices that require improvement. A suitable example is upgrading inefficient technologies to ensure that health care services are not delayed. Improved efficiency improves health care quality and safety since it reduces waiting time and possible health complications.

The other principle for a culture of excellence and safety is evidence-based practice. In this case, there must be a desire to change and solve problems comprehensively. Li et al. (2019) defined evidence-based practice (EBP) as a problem-solving approach that combines scientific evidence, clinical expertise, and patient values and preferences to solve clinical problems. Its goal is to ensure that issues hampering care quality and patient safety are addressed effectively. Such an approach ensures that patients receive the best care possible based on the best evidence and incorporating patient values in treatment plans. EBP also ensures that processes are proven and up-to-date.

Stakeholders’ Roles in Improving Health Care Culture

A health care culture’s goals cannot be achieved without active stakeholder participation. All stakeholders must work collaboratively to establish norms, policies, values, and beliefs for enabling an organization to achieve excellence and safety goals. The first influential stakeholder group involves the leadership, comprising of the management, nurse leaders, and departmental leaders. Leaders use their positions to foster appropriate cultures, influence best practices, and guide health care teams to achieve shared visions (Ayeleke et al., 2018). They also play an instrumental role in condemning and restricting practices that hamper care quality and patient safety.

Besides the leaders, the health care staff and patients’ role is essential in improving health care culture. Progressive outcomes’ improvement cannot be achieved without their engagement and commitment. Through their everyday interaction and close communication with patients, nurses and other health care professionals get a more comprehensive view of patient needs (Sibiya, 2018). They also better understand challenges that hamper outcomes and interventions necessary to achieve excellence and safety standards. As a result, they should drive relevant practice changes to improve quality and safety, among other critical health care aspects. In their part, patients should collaborate with health care providers to achieve the objectives of evidence-based practice. They should be ready to adopt practices that improve health and inform health care providers about their values and preferences.

Using Christian Worldview (CWV) Principles to Improve Ethical Practices

Health care organizations must promote ethical practice. Doing so ensures that the patient-provider relationship is not damaged, among other adverse consequences of unethical practice. To achieve the desired performance and relationship goals, health care organizations can use CWV principles to improve ethical practice. Such principles include human dignity, the common good, and subsidiarity. Human dignity involves recognizing that all human beings possess a unique value regardless of their age, social class, gender, and ethnicity, among other factors. In the same frame, patients and colleagues should be seen as unique individuals deserving respect and protection from harm. It helps to promote equality too. Common good is acting in a way beneficial to all, aligning with the principle of beneficence that obliges health care providers to act for the patients’ benefit by removing harm, protecting patients’ rights, and helping vulnerable patients (Varkey, 2021). A suitable example of subsidiarity is a nurse feeling responsible for patient needs. In such a case, nurses assume their profession more of a responsibility to serve instead of a duty that should be compensated.

Integrating Faith Learning and Work at GCU to Improve Health Care Culture

Broadly, integrating faith learning and work at GCU involves acting being guided by the Christian faith and doctrines. Such a concept can be implemented by promoting servant leadership based on the tenet that serving others is service to God. In this case, serving patients and nursing colleagues represents living as a co-worker of God’s activities. The other way of implementing the concept is fostering interprofessional collaboration following the principle that human beings should help to ease others’ burdens. Continuous promotion of service leadership and interprofessional collaboration builds a culture where health care providers mind each other and work to achieve a shared vision. Workplace conflicts and other issues hampering patient outcomes are minimal in such a culture.

Conclusion

Health care organizations should never tolerate average results. They should foster a culture founded on excellence and ensure optimal patient safety always. To achieve this goal, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and interprofessional collaboration should dominate practice. Stakeholders must also play their part diligently and willingly. CWV principles can also be incorporated into routine patient care to foster ethical practice. Health care professionals should also implement faith learning and work ideals to improve a culture of excellence and safety.

References

Ayeleke, R. O., Dunham, A., North, N., & Wallis, K. (2018).The concept of leadership in the health care sector. Leadership, 83. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76133

ECRI. (2019). Culture of safety: An overview. https://www.ecri.org/components/HRC/Pages/RiskQual21.aspx#:~:text=Patient%20safety%20culture%20is%20the,of%20staff%20throughout%20the%20organization.

Li, S., Cao, M., & Zhu, X. (2019). Evidence-based practice: Knowledge, attitudes, implementation, facilitators, and barriers among community nurses-systematic review. Medicine, 98(39), e17209. https://doi.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000017209

Mannion, R., & Davies, H. (2018).Understanding organisational culture for healthcare quality improvement. Bmj, 363. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k4907

Sibiya, M. N. (2018). Effective communication in nursing. Nursing, 19, 20-34. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.74995

Toussaint, J. (2018).The principles, behaviors, and systems necessary to build a culture of excellence.hfma. https://www.hfma.org/topics/blog/60395.html

Varkey, B. (2021). Principles of clinical ethics and their application to practice. Medical Principles and Practice, 30(1), 17-28.https://doi.org/10.1159/000509119

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Assessment Description
The purpose of this assignment is to discuss health care culture and describe how CWV can be used to improve ethical practices. In a 1,000-1,250-word essay, discuss the important factors associated with health care culture. Include the following in your essay:

A definition of health care culture, including culture of excellence and safety.
Two or three examples of principles for building a culture of excellence and safety.
An explanation of the role of various stakeholders in improving health care culture.
An explanation of how Christian worldview (CWV) principles might be used by health care organizations to improve ethical practices, whether the organizations are Christian or not.
Two or three examples of how the integration of faith learning and work at GCU can be implemented by individuals to improve health care culture.
This assignment requires a minimum of three peer-reviewed scholarly sources.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.