General Surgery Case

General Surgery Case Study

Brief Summary
Background: Barbara Norris grew up in a small town in western Massachusetts. She developed a fond respect and admiration for the nursing profession due to her mother and grandmother both being nurses. She knew that nursing was the career she wanted to peruse. She obtained her nursing degree from Eastern Massachusetts University, and began to work at EMU in the emergency room. She was an ER nurse for four years then transferred to the trauma unit for a year until she became pregnant with her first child. Barbara then worked part-time for the next several years and had her second child.
Barbara returned to full time work in the trauma unit while her
Many assignments are given based on relationships and favoritism
8. We have little input on matters that affect us greatly
9. We feel no one truly defends our interests or advocated on our behalf
All of these issues above need to be addressed, as well as the overtime and hiring freeze in effect, “floaters” being used are having negative effects on staff dynamics and quality of patient care, shifts are long and stressful, staff all want one-on-one meetings with manager and are reluctant to discuss issues and feelings during the off-site although they all feel the same (lack of collaboration, teamwork, interpersonal and intergroup conflict, favoritism, dissatisfaction with staffing, etc.), senior nurses are highly critical of younger nurses, complete and accurate records were not kept by Barbara’s predecessor and there are incomplete performance reviews.
The interpersonal and intergroup conflict/issues among nurses and staff need to be addressed; Low morale and high turnover rates need to improve; The whole rewards and feedback system needs to be fixed; Open communication needs to occur; value needs to be given; and the amount of administrative duties each member need to do needs to be
There are many issues present in the GSU that need to be addressed by the EMU organization.
The Enthusiastic Employee (Sirota, 2013) focused on asking the employees what they want and giving it to them. Barbara took the first step when she decided to run an off-site to really have discussion open up about what is bothering the employees (causing their low satisfaction). Her exercise helped not only the employees, who learned that the issues that were bothering them are department wide, but it also helped Barbara to understand what her staff needs and what her department needs to change in order to have a positive effect.
Open communication was also mentioned in the Enthusiastic Employee. This is important because it allows for transparency between managers and staff. It helps because if there is open communication/ transparency from the higher-ups and everyone knows what is going on, there won’t be misunderstanding from staff because this takes the guess work out. We have mentioned in class that, as humans, we fill in the blanks. We only need partial information and we fill in what’s missing, and we usually think the worst. Open communication is vital to organizational