Excellence in the Workplace Starts with You and Communication Is a Key
Purpose:
The purpose of this presentation is to engage participants in a discussion of management concepts that improve communication, facilitate engagement, and impact personal and professional collaboration. We also will explore how these concepts correlate to clinical practice and can be incorporated into the education setting.
Methods and/or Description of Project:
Managing Up and Managing Down are useful communication tools for anyone to employ regardless of setting. Understanding how to work with “your boss” or “the faculty” or those who are subordinate to you can lead to better working relationships, more productive and coordinated care, and more meaningful outcomes. Developing and regularly revisiting your personal mission, vision, and values and how they relate to the work setting mission, vision, and values allow for effective communication and coordinated work toward strategic goals and plans. Through active engagement during the presentation, participants will have an opportunity to practice these communication concepts. For successful outcomes both in the classroom and in the transition to clinical practice, students need to be fully engaged not only in the clinical side but also the business side of practice. Many students prefer to focus on patient care techniques and have difficulty making the connection between patient care skills and business skills, though both are essential for effective coordination in healthcare. The same tools that students utilize daily with their clients such as creating effective goals that are patient-centered, objective, measurable, functional, and time dependent are similar to SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time bound) objectives utilized on the business side of the practice to improve outcomes. A goal of this presentation is to make those connections for the participants. It is through the connections of patient care skills and management concepts that individuals grow from being novice students to productive members of the healthcare team.
Results/Outcomes:
Only through the understanding of how pieces fit together can students who become employees, staff who become managers, and faculty and department directors work collaboratively to develop relational coordination of healthcare and ensure the mission, vision, and values of the organization are reflected in day to day operations.
Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme:
Communication between parties leads to engagement and being engaged, regardless of the setting, is vital to success. The unengaged learner poses challenges in the classroom, the unengaged patient may not achieve goals, the unengaged faculty may create a challenging environment in which to learn, the unengaged employee may hinder the organization from moving forward and can be costly in terms of outcome based reimbursement, and the unengaged manager may limit the employees’ ability to grow and develop as professionals. Best practice requires communicating with each other, engagement and focus for safety and positive outcomes.