Safe Patient Care Case Study Essay

Case Study 19-1 titled “Organizational and Cultural Change for Providing Safe Patient Care”, on page 382 through 383, is about a Department of Medicine (DoM) in an urban academic medical center where in the past 2 years there has been cases where patients had needlessly suffered serious harm. Even though the cases were far and in betweeen, and most of the employees were comfortable with the status quo however, “the chairperson’s view of patient care safety meant that there was no place for such incidents.” Incidentally, the patient safety incidences occurred inspite of the fact that the medical center had three department meant to address patient safety. Given that the DoM was responsible for making decision in the patient care process, the chairperson felt the responsibility of addressing the issues more directly. The chairperson solution was to create a committee of “change agents” pulled from various departments at the medical center, and tasked with examining “lapses and problems in the delivery of safe patient care and identify trends and clusters that merited action”. The following knowledge concepts, though covered in class, are not applicable to the selected case study: Intercultural perspectives, Practices of Effective Behavior across cultures – Individual and Group, Multicultural teams,
Leaders in an organization play an active role in defining the culture of the organization. The extent to which the original culture remains in the organization will depend on the original primary and secondary reinforcers of the cultural norms that are in place, as well as the investment made by leaders in influencing the organization 's culture. In this case study, the chairperson was able to lead the medical center in solving a patient safety concern without alienating employees, but by creating a better organizational