Lesson 10: Motivation

There have been many times that I have felt motivated in my workplace. Going through all of the required training for my job was very motivating and I think that is supposed to be the focus. They want us to be motivated to be great RN's and provide the best patient care possible. My manager is okay at trying to motivate us on my unit. During employee evaluations she tries to encourage us and tells us that she appreciates the work that we are doing. She emails us every time we receive a "WOW" card or positive comment from a patient. Positive feedback is something that motivates me. I also have co workers that encourage me and are always willing to answer questions. I am motivated when I know i have support from my co workers. Aside from the evaluations and staff meetings, I do not see my manager much. I know that she is busy but I think that it would be helpful if I saw her more during my shifts and she tried to get to know us more personally.

Lesson 8-9: Hiring, Team Building, and Staffing

This week our assignment was to post five behavioral interview questions to a wiki site. These are the questions that I chose to submit.

1. Tell me about your proudest achievement.
2. Tell me about a time when you had to think outside of the box.
3. What can you do for us that other candidates can not?
4. What did you like or dislike about your previous job?
5. Have you ever had difficulty working with a manager?

I also was able to get help on my resume and the UVU career center. This was very helpful and I was able to get some tips that will help me stand out. I have scheduled a mock interview and I am hoping that reviewing the questions on the wiki site will prepare me for this. I will also be interviewing my father-in-law, who is the manager of a company in Helena, MT. I will interview him about the hiring process.

Lesson 7: Managing healthcare resources

In this lesson we were supposed to think of five budget questions and interview an individual who works with a budget. I chose to interview my neighbor who is in charge of planning events for a large computer company. Here are the questions that I chose.

1. What specific categories is your budget divided into? How were these categories determined?

2. Is it ever hard to meet the expectations of your business and stay within your budget?

3. Have you ever had a substantial decrease in budget? If so, how did you decide which areas to rearrange?

4. What would be the consequences of going over your budget?

5. What are some events that you were able to plan while staying within your budget?

I will include the answers when I hear back from him.

In class we discussed ways to cut different areas of the budget. It is a difficult task. I have more sympathy for my manager because it would be stressful to be responsible for a budget.

Lesson 6: Managing Change

My attitude towards change, ill admit, is not positive. It seems like as soon as I get the hang of something at work, it changes or something new is added to the work load. This is hard for many employees, especially those who have worked on the unit for a long time. As nurses, we should expect change. This is why we should keep working to gain experience and keep in the loop with new things happening in healthcare. Leaders must have a positive attitude about change. In order to progress as a unit/hospital there must be changes. Advancements in healthcare are happening all around us and if there was never a change we would be stuck in the 1800s (well maybe not quite but you get the idea).

Lesson 5: Nursing Leadership and Power

There are many different attributes that leaders can have and there are several types of leaders. Some say that men and women have different leadership styles. Personally, I do not like to hurt other peoples feelings and I care about what others think about me. This is a flaw when it comes to leadership because leaders are often the ones who have to confront others about mistakes and make major decisions about employees.

Patient care models- Where I work, there are many patient care models. There are specific models for specific situations. The care should be patient centered. I feel as though our floor runs very smoothly and that overall, patients have a good experience.

Lesson 4: Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is an important aspect of leadership. Leaders are expected to have goals and plan actions according to the desired outcomes of those goals. Planning involves creating an idea and a time frame in which this idea should be implemented. This also includes coordinating people and resources in order to accomplish this planned event/goal. Planning is a difficult concept for many individuals. Leaders must always be thinking ahead in order to progress and be successful. For example, if a charge nurse is going to staff the unit correctly he/she must think ahead to estimate how many patients there will be. They must also keep in mind that things do not always go according to plan so a backup plan will be needed. If strategic planning is not implemented, the shift will be crazy and the employees will not be happy with their leader.

Insights from class 1/31/2012:
Strategic planning is an important part of accomplishing goals. If the right plan is thought through and implemented it can be possible to control outcomes. In the hospital setting, strategic planning is used to increase incoming patients and money. In our nursing careers we will see this type of planning put into practice.

Lesson 3- Ethics

This week in class and through on line assignments we learned about ethics. This topic is actually quite frustrating for me because it seems that there is never an end to the debates. There will ALWAYS be different views and there is no right or wrong answer. The case study described a little girl who was dying of HIV. Her grandmother did not tell her she had HIV or that she was dying. To respect the many laws in healthcare, her nurses were not able to tell her that she was dying. This is a hard case because as nurses we are not allowed to make this decision, even if we disagree.
In the movie "My Sister's Keeper," a mother is desperately trying to save her daughter who has leukemia. She has another child (younger) that can donate blood, organs etc to her sister and is expected to do so. The child with leukemia wants to die and the parents can not see that. They do everything in their power to keep her alive against her own will. As a mother, I can probably say that I would do the same thing. I would do ANYTHING to keep my child alive. In this case the parents eventually learn how to cope with the situation and allow the treatments to end. As healthcare workers, we need to be careful to keep our opinions to ourselves when necessary. If we feel strongly enough about something we do not have to do it. Even if it means getting fired, I would rather have a clean conscience than be forced to do something I feel is unethical.