NURS 6231 Week 4: Organizational Systems and Structures

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NURS 6231 Week 4: Organizational Systems and Structures-Part 2 essay assignment

NURS 6231: Healthcare Systems and Quality Outcomes | Week 4 essay assignment

As Edgar Schein points out in his seminal work Organizational Culture and Leadership, both the Egyptians and the Mayans built pyramids. It would be easy to make the assumption that the building of pyramids must have similar meaning. However, in some cultures, pyramids housed tombs, while in others, they were temples. Within each culture, the meaning of the pyramid was likely evident, but to an outsider’s eye, incorrect assumptions could be made rather easily.

Last week, you began to analyze an organization’s systems and structures as groundwork for promoting patient safety and health care quality. The culture of an organization is also critically important. Leader-managers must understand the nuances of an organization’s culture to effectively address organizational issues.

NURS 6231 Week 4: Organizational Systems and Structures essay assignment

This week you examine the influence of culture on the organization, and on efforts to promote positive systems-level change.

In addition, this week you continue your evaluation of a health care organization and identify a quality improvement issue to inform development of your Course Project.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Analyze essential elements of organizational culture
• Evaluate the influence of organizational culture on achieving organizational goals
• Analyze strategies for aligning organizational culture with quality improvement initiatives
• Identify a quality improvement issue in a health care setting

Discussion: Analyzing Organizational Culture essay assignment

A company’s culture is often buried so deeply inside rituals, assumptions, attitudes, and values that it becomes transparent to an organization’s members only when, for some reason it changes.

—Rob Goffee

Culture is embedded within every organization. Yet, because culture is woven throughout the everyday interactions and atmosphere of an organization, it can be difficult to assess and explain how the culture influences the inner workings of the organization.

As a nurse leader-manager, developing a sound understanding of an organization’s culture can help you to achieve quality improvement initiatives and identify strategies for enacting sustainable change.

For this Discussion, you analyze the culture of an organization and consider how this relates to achieving goals related to quality improvement. You may wish to focus on the same organization that you have selected for your Course Project.

To prepare:

• Review the information on organizational culture in this week’s Learning Resources.
• Reflect on the culture of an organization with which you are familiar. Consider the following:
  • What elements of the organization’s culture seem most prominent or significant to you?
  • What beliefs, dispositions, and/or actions seem to be most valued? Why do you think so?
  • What do you notice about the expectations, assumptions, and more demonstrated among people within the organization?
  • What artifacts provide clues about the culture?
  • How do these cultural elements contribute to or detract from the organization’s ability to meet prominent goals and objectives?
• Consider how you, as a nurse leader-manager, could apply your knowledge of this culture to facilitate quality improvement initiatives within this organization. How would you leverage the strengths of the culture, and address limitations or obstacles that may arise within it?

By Day 3

Post an analysis of the culture of the organization that you selected. Explain how you think this particular culture contributes to or detracts from the organization’s ability to meet goals. Explain how you, as a nurse leader-manager, could utilize your knowledge of this culture to facilitate quality improvement initiatives within this organization.

NURS 6231 Week 4: Organizational Systems and Structures-Part 2 essay assignment

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days using one or more of the following approaches:

• Analyze similarities and differences between your colleague’s organizational culture and the organization that you selected.
• Ask a probing question, substantiated with additional background information or research.
• Share an insight from having read your colleagues’ postings, synthesizing the information to provide new perspectives.
• Suggest leadership strategies that your colleague could use to overcome obstacles in the organization’s culture to facilitate quality improvement initiatives.

Project 1: Promoting Health Care Quality essay assignment

Section 1: Organizational Systems and Structures Evaluation

As you continue your evaluation of a health care organization, it is essential to pay attention to culture. Organizational culture provides the context in which all interactions and processes occur, and is therefore central to any effort to enact change.

To prepare:

• Continue to analyze your selected organization, as indicated in Week 3 (Section 1 of the Course Project).
• In addition, consider the ideas and information exchanged in this week’s Discussion. Continue to analyze essential elements of organizational culture and evaluate the influence of culture on the ability to achieve goals within your selected organization.

To complete:

Write a 3- to 5-page paper in which you:

• Provide a description of the organization you selected
• Present your analysis of the organization with attention to:
  • Its mission, vision, values
  • Strategic plan, goals, and objectives
  • Key operational processes and patterns
  • Information technology use
  • Organizational priorities and investments, as indicated by financial data
  • The essential elements of the organization’s culture
  • The influence of culture on meeting organizational goals

By Day 7

Submit your Project.

Project 2: Promoting Health Care Quality essay assignment

Section 2: Quality Improvement Issue

To help you move forward with your Course Project, this week you identify a quality issue that you would like to address and submit a description of this issue for Instructor feedback.

Your proposed issue should reflect a genuine need for improvement within your selected health care organization. Through your Course Project, you will analyze this issue and propose strategies to improve outcome(s), including the redesign of a related process.

To prepare:

• Review the six quality improvement aims from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) presented in Chapter 3 of the Sadeghi, Barzi, Mikhail, and Shabot text.
• Conduct a search of the literature to help you identify a specific issue that warrants attention and action to promote quality improvement.
• Consider what you have surmised thus far through your analysis of the organization that you selected. What have you noticed that could help you identify a quality-related need for improvement? For instance:
  • What has captured your attention in meetings, reports, and/or daily activities?
  • Have you noticed discrepancies between activities in the organization and recommendations in the research literature, quality standards, and/or the organization’s stated policies and procedures?
  • If so, what do you think could be the reason(s) for variations or gaps between what you have observed and what is recommended?
• Identify a quality improvement issue that you would like to investigate for this project.

Note: Review the Course Project Overview/full instructions, located in the Week 3 Learning Resources, as needed to identify a quality improvement issue that is viable for completing the full scope of this project. Once you receive a response from your Instructor on the quality improvement issue that you submit, be sure to integrate his or her feedback before moving forward with Section 3 of your Course Project.

To complete:

Write a brief description of the quality improvement issue that you would like to address for your Course Project.

By Day 7

Submit your Project.