BHA 3002- Surgical Residents in Crisis

BHA 3002- Surgical Residents in Crisis

What if you were an administrator for a teaching hospital and came into work to find out that policies, procedures, and rules that were placed to protect patients and staff were ignored and your facility is now facing major lawsuits. In the medical world crisis have a high percentage of happening, however their severity can be high or low. If the physician and staff is well educated in crisis management, then the chances of a lawsuit would be slim to none. Rules need to be made to make sure staff continues to be updated on the most recent and important crisis management news and rules. A facility and staff has improved after recovering from a crisis, patient care is to be improved and maintained so another crisis bound to occur.

Being in the healthcare field your average hours for a provider would be 12 hours. When the providers want to try to do overtime which is considered doubles that is where things become dangerous. Many mistakes are at risk at that point. “The institute of Medicine estimates that medical errors caused between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths annually in the US alone, resulting in US $17 to 29 billion in cost annually” (Healey & Evans 2014). Upon internal investigations, surgical residents are taking risks and operating under unsafe circumstances. By the surgeons not following the procedures and policies, dangerous mistakes have appeared causing patients to die behind it. Which makes the entire facility look bad, by creating internal crisis for the facility. Per Safian, an internal crisis is “an event that occurs within the facility, primarily affects only those within the organization” (Safian, 2014). The crisis that are happening in the facility can be used to determine the type of disaster that’s occurring in the facility. With everything going on in the facility this would be labeled as a human disaster. Which is a possible catastrophic event that happens due to human error, such as a surgeon not being mentally or physically prepared to perform surgery.

In the healthcare world, mistakes are always expected to be made. To avoid mistakes, it is a great idea to implement the crisis management triad. The crisis management has three phases: preventive, concurrent, and recovery. Preventive phase is the opportunity to implement policies and procedures designed to avert a crisis (Safian, 2014). “Internal crisis can be prevented with policies and procedures in place to ensure both patients and staff safety” (Safian, 2014). Ways a facility can continue to stay updated on the policy and procedures is my implementing training which will show physician if staff knows the material. If you have your staff up to date on all material, you then can implement a zero- tolerance policy so when policies aren’t followed correctly then there is not “I didn’t know this or I wasn’t updated” conversations. The staff will be aware of all consequences that will come if procedures and policies aren’t followed. The concurrent phase is the time during the crisis which means current. You should never rely on your memory in the healthcare world. You should always go back to your crisis management plan. You should never treat your current situation like your last even if they are alike. When using the crisis management plan the best thing to do is to follow it step by step. The main goal when a crisis occurs is to make sure to communicate with your staff. If the crisis is concerning a legal situation, its best to not speak with anyone except the facilities attorney. Which is just taking precaution to not break any laws while trying to fix a problem. When the crisis passes its then time for the staff and facility to recover and heal. The third phase is called the recovery phase. This phase is the segment of time, after the crisis has passed, during which the organization, and all its members, must recoup and get back to a pre-crisis state (Safian, 2014). There are many steps that are still needed to be completed. Per Safian after a crisis, a post- event analysis needs to be completed, which evaluates how the facility handled each aspect of the situation (Safian, 2014). With the situation that has occurred with the surgeons, the preventive phase did not hold to good. I think this phase should be reevaluated to help prevent situations like this from happening. The phase that the facility is currently in would be the concurrent phase. When in this phase it is important for staff to work together. Especially staff involved in suits, the administration also needs to be sure to be communicating with staff concerning expectations. Also, to keep staff updated but also being safe on what’s being told before getting legal assistance. When talking about the recovery phase, the organization will need to recoup their preventive steps. They can do this by updating policies, testing or reevaluating staff, and enforcing their policies and procedures stronger. By implementing the crisis management triad, it can assist you in keeping the facility with less crisis situations as well as keeping staff on the correct path. When a crisis is to occur the crisis management triad is here to save the day.

The most important thing you want to be sure to do is to improve the performance of staff as well as improve patient care. As talked about by Safian, the US Office of Personal Management (OPM) describes five parts that can improve staff performance (Safian, 2014). These five steps include, planning work in advance so that expectations and goals can be set, monitor progress and performance continuously, develop a method of training and assignments for staff, rating performance, and rewarding good performance (Safian, 2014). It’s very important to get staff motivated so find ways or things that the staff will be eager to join and start on. Intrinsic motivation is when the staff gets pleasure for joining or starting assignment. Extrinsic motivation is when rewards or acknowledgements will be in place. You want to be sure to improve the way you manage your staff. Create performance improvement plans which will help you keep all the staff’s skills and need to be improved skills in order and documented.

In conclusion, the improvement of patient care is the main goal. You would need to continue to follow your crisis management plan as well as monitoring staff performance. By following all the resources, the patient care will automatically improve if you’re doing everything by the book.

References

Healey, B. J., & Evans, T. M. (2015). Introduction to health care services: Foundations and challenges. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.

Safian, S. C. (2014). Fundamentals of health care administration.