Walden NURS 6053 Week 7 Workplace Environment Assignment
Walden NURS 6053 Week 7 Workplace Environment Assignment
Walden NURS 6053 Week 7 Workplace Environment Assignment
Part 1: Work Environment Assessment
The workplace assessment that was conducted in the discussion revealed the existence of several workplace incivilities at the author’s former organization. The organization scored 49 points from the Clark Healthy Workplace Assessment Tool (Clark, Sattler, & Barbosa-Leiker, 2016). The assessment revealed that the organization suffered from issues such as poor conflict management, poor vertical and horizontal communication, absence of collaboration and teamwork, and absence of shared governance, decision-making, policy formulation, review and revision. The above mentioned areas demonstrated a worse performance by the organization as relates to the existing workplace culture. As regards the lack of shared governance, decision-making, and disenfranchised policy formulation, the author experienced what they call lack of care from the administrative section of the organization. The executives seemed not to bother about the operations of the facility as they appeared to operate remotely as demonstrated by their appearance only once during the year that the author worked at the facility. Moreover, the issue of holding meetings without the presence of staff was another incivility that characterized the organization. The absence of contribution to the decisions made at these meetings by the personnel makes it difficult for the implementation to occur. The reason for this is that the employees will always feel that they do not own the decision since they were not involved in the preceding process (Collini, Guidroz, & Perez, 2015). The lack of ownership by the employees will ensure that they implement the decisions made at the executive level in a half-hearted manner, which will impact the quality of services offered by the organization. Moreover, such instances lead to the creation of apathy at the workplace, which negatively influences the workplace culture.
The results of the Clark Healthy Workplace Assessment Tool revealed surprising facts about the organization. The issue of employee participation on decision-making was very surprising to me as well as the absence of celebration regarding the achievements made by employees. Initially, the author thought that the above phenomena were commonplace occurrences at various organizations and as such, they should not make it to the list. However, the revelation that the above issues not only impact the workplace culture but also civility as stated by the assessment tool was surprising (Lee, Idris, & Delfabbro, 2017). The author thought that decision-making undertakings were supposed to be left to the management and the employees only needed to have a representation. However, the analysis highlighted the need to have employees at the meetings so as to ensure that they own the decisions. Further, celebrating the achievements of individuals did not appear as an issue to the author since they would be doing their responsibilities. So, the author thought that its absence at the facility would not be considered as an issue before the assessment.
The workplace assessment presented in the discussion indict the health and civility of the workplace. The consequences of the above revelations from the assessment tool negatively affect the health of the organization in terms of the existing workplace culture. The absence of appreciations and involvement in decision-making has made the employees to demonstrate apathy (Schilpzand, De Pater, & Erez, 2016). The presence of these low-intensity deviant behavior is manifested in the absence of respect between and among employees as shown by banging of doors, the toxic and uncivilized nature of employee behavior is also demonstrative of the two concepts.
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.
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.
ORDER NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT: Walden NURS6053 Week 7 Workplace Environment Assignment
Assignment: Workplace Environment Assessment
Clearly, diagnosis is a critical aspect of healthcare. However, the ultimate purpose of a diagnosis is the development and application of a series of treatments or protocols. Isolated recognition of a health issue does little to resolve it.
Having Trouble Meeting Your Deadline?
Get your assignment on Walden NURS 6053 Week 7 Workplace Environment Assignment completed on time. avoid delay and – ORDER NOW
In this module’s Discussion, you applied the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory to diagnose potential problems with the civility of your organization. In this Portfolio Assignment, you will continue to analyze the results and apply published research to the development of a proposed treatment for any issues uncovered by the assessment.
Your post and observation on this issue is important and I would say I did witness the stress that Covid-19 brought to my job, community, and the country. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, when infections and deaths began to increase exponentially worldwide. The first cases were reported during December 2019 in Wuhan, China (WHO, 2020). I worked at my local hospital here in Tampa, Florida and when covid came, the hospital did not know how to handle it, surgeries were limited to emergencies only, we lost hours at work and sometimes we were forced to work on covid floors against our will. It was frustrating! I had to get another job as I wasn’t making enough to support the family and eventually after a few months decided to finally face the devil (Covid-19) and took a travelling nurse job.
Struggling to Meet Your Deadline?
Get your assignment on Walden NURS 6053 Week 7 Workplace Environment Assignment done on time by medical experts. Don’t wait – ORDER NOW!
The stress and inconvenience brought by Covid-19 was tasking on both healthcare workers and patients. It was sad for health care workers to see their colleagues get the virus, suffer health consequences and die. The rapid spread of the disease created challenges for healthcare systems and forced healthcare workers to grapple with clinical and nonclinical stressors, including shortages of personal protective equipment, mortality and morbidity associated with COVID-19, fear of bringing the virus home to family members, and the reality of losing colleagues to the disease (Hall, 2020).
The burnout from the adverse effect of covid-19 combined with nursing shortage heightened the stress in the healthcare industry mostly with nurses bearing the brunt of it all. Colleagues at my job were constantly complaining, reluctant to work, at times I would hear nurses crying in the bathroom and break room. There were no early organizational strategies in place to assist employees with stressors related to Covid-19. Early detection of psychological distress and supportive intervention should be taken according to the associated factors to prevent more serious psychological impact on frontline nurses (Nie et al., 2020).
Thank you.
References
Hall, H. (2020). The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on Healthcare Workers’ Mental Health. Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, 33(7), 45–48. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.jaa.0000669772.78848.8c
Nie, A., Su, X., Zhang, S., Guan, W., & Li, J. (2020). Psychological impact of Covid‐19 outbreak on Frontline Nurses: A cross‐sectional survey study. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 29(21-22), 4217–4226. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15454
WHO (2020). Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Available online at: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 (Accessed: September 14th, 2022).
To Prepare:
- Review the Resources and examine the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory, found on page 20 of Clark (2015).
- Review the Work Environment Assessment Template.
- Reflect on the output of your Discussion post regarding your evaluation of workplace civility and the feedback received from colleagues.
- Select and review one or more of the following articles found in the Resources:
- Clark, Olender, Cardoni, and Kenski (2011)
- Clark (2018)
- Clark (2015)
- Griffin and Clark (2014)
The Assignment (3-6 pages total):
Part 1: Work Environment Assessment (1-2 pages)
- Review the Work Environment Assessment Template you completed for this Module’s Discussion.
- Describe the results of the Work Environment Assessment you completed on your workplace.
- Identify two things that surprised you about the results and one idea you believed prior to conducting the Assessment that was confirmed.
- Explain what the results of the Assessment suggest about the health and civility of your workplace.
Part 2: Reviewing the Literature (1-2 pages)
- Briefly describe the theory or concept presented in the article(s) you selected.
- Explain how the theory or concept presented in the article(s) relates to the results of your Work Environment Assessment.
- Explain how your organization could apply the theory highlighted in your selected article(s) to improve organizational health and/or create stronger work teams. Be specific and provide examples.
Part 3: Evidence-Based Strategies to Create High-Performance Interprofessional Teams (1–2 pages)
- Recommend at least two strategies, supported in the literature, that can be implemented to address any shortcomings revealed in your Work Environment Assessment.
- Recommend at least two strategies that can be implemented to bolster successful practices revealed in your Work Environment Assessment.
By Day 7 of Week 9
Submit your Workplace Environment Assessment Assignment.
Submission and Grading Information
To submit your completed Assignment for review and grading, do the following:
- Please save your Assignment using the naming convention “WK9Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” as the name.
- Click the Week 9 Assignment Rubric to review the Grading Criteria for the Assignment.
- Click the Week 9 Assignment link. You will also be able to “View Rubric” for grading criteria from this area.
- Next, from the Attach File area, click on the Browse My Computer button. Find the document you saved as “WK9Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” and click Open.
- If applicable: From the Plagiarism Tools area, click the checkbox for I agree to submit my paper(s) to the Global Reference Database.
- Click on the Submit button to complete your submission.
Grading Criteria
To access your rubric:
Week 9 Assignment Rubric
Check Your Assignment Draft for Authenticity
To check your Assignment Draft for Authenticity:
Submit your Week 9 Assignment draft and review the originality report
Submit Your Assignment by Day 7 of Week 9
To participate in this Assignment:
Week 9 Assignment
Next Module
To go to the next module:
Module 5
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
Incivility is a reoccurring problem in the healthcare system. According to Clark (2018), uncivil work environments lead to self-doubt, weakened self-confidence, and compromised clinical judgment skills. Therefore, uncivil working environments lead to less safe conditions for patients and staff working in the environment. About 20% of workers report that they experience or witness incivility daily (Di Fabio & Duradoni, 2019). I believe it is important to feel valued and respected in the workplace. Uncivil work environments can cause a quick turnover and poor morale.
How Civil is my Work Environment?
After taking the Work Environment Assessment, I was sad to find out that my current place of work is in the “Barely Healthy” category. Following the prompts, my place of work scored 68 out of 100. My organization was missing many categories that create a healthy work environment, such as shared values, emphasis on leadership, and civility conversations (Clark, 2015). My current organization scored a few 4’s, many 3’s, and even a few 2’s when completing the survey. Something I feel my organization needs to work on is room for growth. There are often no raises and next to no opportunities for promotions and growth. Tuition is not reimbursed, and there is no support for furthering your education. Another area where my organization did not score high is that although a small organization, nurses are often left out of decision-making even when the decision directly involves floor nurses. This creates a low employee satisfaction rate and mistrust in organizational leaders.
A Time I Experienced Incivility
Unfortunately, I think we have experienced incivility more than once in our nursing career. Recently I had an experience where a coworker was rude and unhelpful. We did not have enough Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) on our unit for the day, and I had multiple entirely dependent patients. I asked my coworker, another RN, to assist in helping me get my patient back into bed and change their diaper. My coworker responded, “I am not a CNA; that is CNA work .”I was frustrated because I tried to go above and beyond to help out my coworkers and CNAs, and also annoyed because all CNA work falls under nursing care. However, I did not have time to argue with her, so instead, I asked another coworker who was willing to help me. When my director heard about the confrontation, I was upset because she asked me why I did not ask the CNA for help before asking the other nurse. However, the CNA was in another room, and the nurse was sitting at the nurses’ station. I felt unsupported and annoyed because I always help out my coworkers. At my organization, many nurses understand that we have to support each other because we often do not have extra support. The nurse unwilling to help me was new to the organization; the charge nurse that day heard what occurred and reeducated the new employee that CNA work is still considered nursing care and must be completed by nurses if there are not enough CNAs on the shift. I hope that in the future, she will be willing to help so that the patients do not suffer.
Conclusion
Incivility can negatively impact your work life and cause self-esteem issues in your home life (Di Fabio & Duradoni, 2019). Understanding the impact of incivility on your employees when in a leadership position and on your coworkers is essential. As nurses, we should understand how to acknowledge and address incivility to protect ourselves and our patients best. Organizations should survey their employees to determine where there is room for improvement to create a safer and happier working environment.
References
Clark, C. M. (2015). Conversations to inspire and promote a more civil workplace. American Nurse Today, 10(11), 18-23 Retrieved from https://www.myamericannurse.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ant11-CE-Civility-1023.pdf
Clark, C. M. (2018). Combining cognitive rehearsal, simulation, and evidence-based scripting to address incivility. Nurse Educator, 44(2), 64–68. https://doi.org/10.1097/nne.0000000000000563
Di Fabio, A., & Duradoni, M. (2019). Fighting incivility in the workplace for women and all workers: The challenge of primary prevention. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01805
Workplace environments such as patient care settings should be supportive to ensure that the staff has good working environments to help enhance patient outcomes. The implication is that the environment significantly affects patient and nursing outcomes. Therefore, organizations should strive to cultivate positive cultures, such as interprofessional collaboration and patient safety culture (O’Donovan et al.,2019). Respect for diversity and civil behaviors to help support a positive work environment and lower the chances of incivility. As such, the purpose of this assignment is to examine the results of the work environment assessment, review relevant literature, and present evidence-based strategies for creating high-performance interprofessional teams.
The Work Environment Assessment
From the responses, our workplace is moderately healthy, with a score of 85. There is a high level of employee satisfaction, engagement, and morale. There are sufficient resources for professional growth and development. There is an emphasis on employees’ wellness and self-care. The score, therefore, indicates that our organization is civil. Various aspects were supervised from the assessment. For example, the organization has been known to value efficient, safe, and high-quality patient care, and it has also consistently achieved a high ranking based on quality and safe patient care and patient satisfaction. However, the facility has been having complications with retaining the staff, an indication which could be a reflection that the staff is not that satisfied. As such, I expected a lower score. The next aspect which surprised me was the score obtained regarding the application of teamwork in the organization. It has been evident that nurses use teamwork when offering care to patients. They also have been using multidisciplinary teams in care assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring. Nonetheless, the scores related to teamwork were low, which was a surprise to me.
There are also other ideas that I believed and got confirmed by the workplace assessment. For example, the organization obtained lower scores connected to conflict resolution. The organization has operated for a long time without putting in place a formal structure for conflict resolution. Hence a considerable number of conflicts remain unresolved. This was confirmed by lower scores. The assessment of the organizations showed that my workplace is moderately healthy. The high scores were obtained since the organization values the use of effective strategies that promote patient care. Therefore, there is a need to integrate strategies that would help the organization work on the areas of weakness.
Reviewing of Literature
The theory presented in the chosen article highlights how heightened levels of student stress and nursing faculty, workload, faculty superiority, and the attitudes of student entitlement all lead to incivility. Therefore, this concept is a reflection of how stressors can lead to incivility in nursing practice as well as nursing education. The article highlights various stressors, such as lack of skills and knowledge, organizational conditions, unclear expectations and roles, and work overload. According to the theory presented in the article, it is important to model effective communication to help address incivility since it has been shown that effective communication helps in lowering the incidences and impacts of civility (Clark et al.,2011).
The theory presented in this article is related to the results of the work environment assessment. For example, it is important to note that the organization has been using effective communication to help drive forward patient safety and efficiency forward, which saw the organization obtain high scores in this regard. Therefore, it helped the organization to obtain a moderately healthy status. On the other hand, a lack of effective communication has been observed in conflict resolution times, where the organization lacks a formal model of communication that can help resolve conflicts. As such, the organization had low scores in the area. The organization can apply this theory to create stronger work teams by using effective communication as part of conflict resolution (Griffin et al.,2014). This will help the workers to solve their conflicts better and create stronger teams by working together.
Evidence-Based Strategies to Created High-Performance Interprofessional Teams
The workplace assessment revealed that the organization is moderately healthy. However, various strategies can still be applied to address the shortcomings revealed in the assessment to improve the organization. One of the strategies that can be used is to enhance employee engagement in organizational issues. One aspect that was found to lead to lower retention rates is the minimal involvement of the staff in organizational issues. Therefore, their engagement on organizational issues should be enhanced. The use of staff engagement has been supported by literature (Huang & Pun, 2022). Another strategy is rewarding employees who perform well. Such a strategy will lead to motivating the staff and increasing their job satisfaction, productivity, and retention. The strategy will also likely reduce conflicts as employees will be rewarded based on their performance (Seitovirta et al.,2018). Various strategies can also be implemented to bolster successful practice. For example, the organization can use open communication, an effective reward system as well as an appropriate conflict resolution mechanism.
Conclusion
Workplace incivility negatively impacts both patient outcomes and the nursing activities performed to improve patient outcomes. Workplace assessment can be key to revealing how civil the work environment is. The workplace assessment performed revealed that the organization is moderately civil; as such, various strategies can be used to help improve the organization.
References
Clark, C. M., Olender, L., Cardoni, C., & Kenski, D. (2011). Fostering civility in nursing education and practice: Nurse leader perspectives. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 41(7/8), 324-330. 10.1097/NNA.0b013e31822509c4
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. https://doi.org/10.3928/00220124-20141122-02
Huang, Q., & Pun, J. (2022). Views of Hospital Nurses and Nursing Students on Nursing Engagement—Bridging the Gap Through Communication Courses. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 915147. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.915147
Seitovirta, J., Lehtimäki, A.-V., Vehviläinen-Julkunen, K., Mitronen, L., & Kvist, T. (2018). Registered nurses’ perceptions of rewarding and its significance. Journal of Nursing Management, 26(4), 457–466. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12571
O’Donovan, R., Ward, M., De Brún, A., & McAuliffe, E. (2019). Safety culture in health care teams: A narrative review of the literature. Journal of Nursing Management, 27(5), 871–883. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12740
Rubric Detail
Select Grid View or List View to change the rubric’s layout.
Name: NURS_6053_Module04_Week09_Assignment_Rubric
Grid View
List View
Excellent Good Fair Poor
Part 1: Work Environment Assessment
· Complete the Work Environment Assessment Template.
· Describe the results of the Work Environment Assessment you completed on your workplace.
· Identify two things that surprised you about the results and one idea that you believed prior to conducting the assessment that was confirmed.
· Explain what the results of the assessment suggests about the health and civility of your workplace.
45 (45%) – 50 (50%)
An accurate, detailed, and completed Work Environment Assessment Template is provided.
The responses accurately and thoroughly describe in detail the results of the Work Environment Assessment completed on a workplace.
The responses accurately and clearly identify two surprising things about t