Hartland Memorial Hospital Case

Purpose
The purpose of this case study is to investigate and bring new insight to situations and behaviors within an organization. Case studies are learning tools which utilize social science research to identify and resolve individual and organizational challenges (K. Mariama-Arthur Esq., 2015).
Setting
Hartland Memorial Hospital, located in Westfield was established eighty-five years ago. The hospital is accredited for a full range of medical and surgical services. Elizabeth Parsons is the vice president for Nursing Services at Hartland Memorial Hospital. Within her seventeen months of employment, she was instrumental in finding innovative ways to create a self-scheduling system, a compressed work week, and a performance appraisal system

for the organization. For months, she worked long stressful hours while continuously being accessible by cell phone, voicemail, and email. After a much-needed vacation from the stress of work, she returned with only an hour to regroup and to prioritize all the problems before her meeting on Monday morning.
Problem and the basic underlying issue
In Elizabeth’s short absence, there were messages collected and left by her administrative assistant Wilma Smith and her assistant nursing director Anne Armstrong. The issues presented to Elizabeth were insufficient nursing staff which resulted in multiple nursing errors. Nurses are poorly trained who were hired from a temporary agency. At the same time, the operating rooms infection levels were high. Poor communication between physician and nursing staff. The threat of senior nurses leaving Hartland Memorial Hospital. As well as, an impending lawsuit related to a wandering diabetic Alzheimer’s patient found naked and unconscious in the hospital basement, a sexual harassment charge, and a nurse working under false documentation.
Consequences of the Problems
Patient safety and quality of care is weighted on the quality of the environment where care is being delivered. According to the CDC statistics, Staphylococcus and Pseudomonas infections in the operating rooms are on a steady rise. Debra Wood, RN, contributor of The Nursing Voice, conducted a study and found that low nursing staff and high nursing staff burnout were factors related to increase hospital associated infections. In a like manner, Hartland Memorial hospital faced high level of infections due to insufficient staffing.
Balance the Positive and Negative Factors
Nurse staffing absenteeism is a daily nurse management affair. Key factors related to this matter are employee illness, dissatisfaction with institutional conditions, and inadequate interpersonal relationship. Some ways to balance the negative factors are:
Employee Illness – Hartland Memorial Hospital needs to educate their nurses along with their family members on preventing and managing minor illnesses before absence is needed.

Engaging employees and families in healthy work programs, regular check-ups and illness prevention strategies are smart investments.
Regular nursing staff replaced by outside nurses – outside nursing staff make up the required numbers for Hartland Memorial Hospital.
Nursing supervisors may need to take on patient care – nursing supervisors can use this time to evaluate the nursing team and the outside nurses for possible recruitment to Hartland Memorial Hospital.
Outside nurses can have negative impact on patient outcome due to unfamiliarity of unit culture and Hartland Memorial Hospital vision – regular nursing staff can mentor outside nurses giving them the confidence to provide safe and optimal patient care.
Poor Communication between Physician and Nursing – To optimize nurse-physician communication both need to apply patient centered cultural change; in particular, to use structured communication tools such as Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation (SBAR), and supportive technology that is system wide, for example electronic medical record (EMR). (B. Schmidt, 2012).
Financial

Implications