NUR 630 Health Care Culture
Health Care Culture
Health care organizations are valuable in addressing complex health problems and enabling populations to live productively. Amid increased innovation and public health issues, leaders and staff should collaborate to promote and sustain a culture of high-quality care. Such a culture’s defining variables include proactive measures for infection control, continuous quality improvement, and optimal patient satisfaction. Organizations should also be safe environments where excellence is prioritized and patients are supported to achieve their health goals. The purpose of this paper is to discuss health care culture and describe how the Christian worldview (CWV) can be used in health care settings to improve ethical practices.
Health Care Culture
Health care leaders and staff share many attributes in their pursuit of high-performance organizations. Qin et al. (2023) described culture as norms, sustained values, and deep-rooted beliefs defining an organization’s operations and business methods. Based on this definition, a health care culture entails the shared practices and organizational norms that ensure patient care meets the desired goals. Qin et al. (2023) further mentioned that a unique culture gives health care organizations a competitive advantage. Therefore, health care organizations should prioritize a culture that strengthens collective perceptions and work approaches that accomplish health goals.
A culture of excellence in health care is characterized by best practices that meet the expected professional and ethical standards. As Ten Ham-Baloyi et al. (2020) cited, best practice extends evidence-based interventions since it represents optimal quality care. In a culture of excellence, health practices, standard procedures, and interventions seek to improve patient and health outcomes. To sustain excellence, health care facilities tailor best practices to diverse populations’ unique needs and preferences. Health care providers and patients need safe environments free from risks and infections. A safety culture is demonstrated by an organization’s commitment to core values and principles that promote worker and patient safety (CDC, 2022). Leaders in a safety culture recognize high-risk exposures that can cause harm and ensure they are reported. This reporting allows leaders and change agents to develop and implement essential prevention and control standards and policies.
Examples of How to Build a Culture of Excellence and Culture of Safety
Building a culture of excellence and safety requires organizations committed to implementing evidence-based practice (EBP). In medicine and health care, EBP involves using current best evidence conscientiously and judiciously in making health decisions about the care of patients (Harrison et al., 2023). EBP enables best practice by ensuring decisions are made in the best interest of patients. In an EBP culture, health care providers adopt recent methods to control infections, ensure high-quality care, and ensure a committed workforce. For instance, innovative methods enhance the efficiency of care, optimize value, and help to prevent adverse events like medical errors.
Besides EBP, employee empowerment is crucial to promoting a culture of safety and excellence. Part of this empowerment involves training programs to improve nurses’ skills, knowledge, and attitudes. Kakkar et al. (2021) found education programs instrumental in improving nurses’ attitudes and knowledge of infection control, helping them prevent hospital-associated infections. Empowerment also involves addressing staff health and well-being. For nurses to deliver excellence, leaders should ensure safe environments and optimal nurses’ health. Lu et al. (2022) also found that investing in patient safety culture is a valuable organizational resource for enabling nurses to improve care quality and achieve the desired well-being levels. Organizations that invest in such a culture support their staff in staying healthy and productive through resources, visionary leadership, and collaborative practice.
Role of Various Stakeholders in Improving Health Care Culture
Improving health care culture is a collaborative practice that involves organizational leaders (the management), health care professionals, and patients. The management and health care workers work as a team to create an environment where risks are identified and reported and appropriate control measures are implemented (CDC, 2022). Leaders have a higher responsibility of providing resources that enable nurses address safety concerns and provide optimal patient care. They also need to create environments that embrace change to ensure continuous improvements in outcomes. In agreement with Milella et al. (2021), health care organizations must evolve incrementally and radically as change necessitates. This evolution makes the more innovative, hence the need for leaders to create environments that embrace change. Nurses’ primary mandate in improving health care culture is integrating best practices into patient care and engaging in continuous quality improvement. Best practices enhance value and ensure interventions achieve the desired outcomes for health care providers and patients. As stakeholders, patients should participate in shared decision-making to ensure that health interventions respond to their unique needs. They are health consumers who should openly demand safety and high-quality care to ensure advocacy, policymaking, evidence-based care, and other practices that lead to improved outcomes.
Explanation of How CWV Principles Might Be Used
Health care organizations, whether Christian or not, can use CWV principles to improve ethical practices. From a Christian perspective, nursing is a personal call from God that obligates health care providers to serve patients through caring and compassion (Biber, 2023; Gage, 2023). Nursing is an expression of Christianity that allows nurses to support patients as a needy population. Since all people are created in God’s image, the Christian approach to healing underlines the importance of treating patients with dignity and respecting them as unique individuals. The nurse’s desire to become God’s co-worker is critical to preventing issues that cause harm while prioritizing patients’ needs. The Christian dimension also allows health care providers to integrate critical aspects like spirituality into patient care. Spirituality fosters whole-person care, and nurses seek it to overcome emotional distress (Biber, 2023; Gage, 2023). Issues such as stress and burnout can be effectively overcome through spiritual coping, underscoring the need for a practice that is guided by the Christian worldview.
Examples of How the Integration of Faith, Learning, and Work
Many factors, including faith, health knowledge, and personal values shape nursing practices. Integrating faith, learning and work at GCU involves engaging in work that honors God, serves neighbors, and helps advance society (Grand Canyon University, 2022). This integration can be practiced to improve health care culture through innovative care delivery methods that advance society through accessible, cost-effective care. For instance, virtual care achieves this goal by reducing infections and improving access to care. Individuals can also integrate faith, learning, and work through practices that serve God, such as compassionate care and voluntary practices. A suitable example is volunteering to help older adults through health education, basic care, and performing activities of daily living.
Conclusion
Health care organizations address population health needs through high-quality care in safe clinical environments. Health care culture is a collection of shared practices and values in nursing that enables care providers to achieve the desired health outcomes. Integral to it is a safety culture where practices, common goals, and interventions seek to optimize worker and patient safety. A culture of excellence involves the pursuit of high-performance organizations. To improve health care culture, nurses and leaders collaborate in implementing EBP, continuous quality improvement, and positive organizational change.
References
Biber, D. (2023). Persevering in nursing with Godly purpose. Journal of Christian Nursing: a Quarterly Publication of Nurses Christian Fellowship, 40(2), E12–E13. https://doi.org/10.1097/CNJ.0000000000001057
CDC. (2022). Why a culture of safety is important. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/learning/safetyculturehc/module-1/2.html
Gage, J. (2023). Faith integration and spiritual care in nursing: a pragmatic utility analysis. Journal of Faith in the Academic Profession, 2(2), 71-78. https://cbuopenpublishing.org/index.php/jfap
Grand Canyon University. (2022). Integration of faith, learning and work at Grand Canyon University. https://www.gcu.edu/Documents/IFLW.pdf
Harrison, M., Rhodes, T., & Lancaster, K. (2023). Situating ‘best practice’: Making healthcare familiar and good enough in the face of unknowns. SSM-Qualitative Research in Health, 4, 100343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2023.100343
Kakkar, S. K., Bala, M., & Arora, V. (2021). Educating nursing staff regarding infection control practices and assessing its impact on the incidence of hospital-acquired infections. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, 10, 40. https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_542_20
Lu, L., Ko, Y. M., Chen, H. Y., Chueh, J. W., Chen, P. Y., & Cooper, C. L. (2022). Patient Safety and Staff Well-Being: Organizational Culture as a Resource. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(6), 3722. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19063722
Milella, F., Minelli, E. A., Strozzi, F., & Croce, D. (2021). Change and innovation in healthcare: Findings from literature. ClinicoEconomics and Outcomes Research: CEOR, 13, 395–408. https://doi.org/10.2147/CEOR.S301169
Qin, X., Wang, R., Huang, Y. N., Zhao, J., Chiu, H. C., Tung, T. H., … & Wang, B. L. (2023). Organisational culture research in healthcare: a big data bibliometric study. Healthcare, 11(2), 169. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11020169
Ten Ham-Baloyi, W., Minnie, K., & van der Walt, C. (2020). Improving healthcare: a guide to roll-out best practices. African Health Sciences, 20(3), 1487–1495. https://doi.org/10.4314/ahs.v20i3.55
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Assessment Description
The purpose of this assignment is to discuss health care culture and describe how CWV can be used to improve ethical practices. In a 1,000-1,250-word essay, discuss the important factors associated with health care culture. Include the following in your essay:
- A definition of health care culture, including culture of excellence and safety.
- Two or three examples of principles for building a culture of excellence and safety.
- An explanation of the role of various stakeholders in improving health care culture.
- An explanation of how Christian worldview (CWV) principles might be used by health care organizations to improve ethical practices, whether the organizations are Christian or not.
- Two or three examples of how the integration of faith learning and work at GCU can be implemented by individuals to improve health care culture.
This assignment requires a minimum of three peer-reviewed scholarly sources.
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