the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory
Work Civility
After completing the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory, my current workplace received a score of 72, which ranked as a mildly healthy workplace , which I agree with. Although this organization truly wants to be its best for its employees and patients, there are too many issues that caused it to receive a lower score. This organization’s nursing staff consists of a staggering 80-90% of travel RN´s. I find this to be a huge issue because it leads to the questions; ¨How come your core staff doesn’t want to work here?¨ Also, ¨What is the reason that other nurses are staffing this hospital, and not the local nurses you already have?¨ After speaking to the few core staff at this hospital many causes were brought to my attention.
lack of trust in the organization and lack of appreciation
These causes included nurse burnout, inadequate leadership, lack of trust in the organization and lack of appreciation. I noticed the Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory had many questions regarding employee health and satisfaction. Unfortunately these are the areas this company scored the worst, bringing down their overall score. This is important to note because several studies conducted have proven that job attitude directly correlates to patient health and satisfaction (Chang et al., 2020). In addition, the nurses who had higher job satisfaction, were more likely to have a higher job performance (Chang et al., 2020).
Another reason I found this workplace to be mildly civil is because of the lack of stability. There are many nurses, RT´s PT´s that come in to work for a travel contract. And leave after a few short months. This doesn’t allow a familiarity or a relationship to be built between the staff nor the patients. Many people I work with have a mindset of ¨I´m going to be here for a short while, let me do what I need and leave¨. There is very little loyalty to the company, there are no trustworthy relationships, and there is frequent change. All this leads to a decreased work satisfaction. It is also important that patients be able to create a trusting relationship with their care providers, as it leads to reassurance and a sense of security (Leslie & Lonneman, 2016).
Experience with Incivility in the Workplace
A moment when I experienced incivility in my workplace, was a time before becoming a travel nurse. It was right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I worked at a very small community hospital; and like the rest of the country this disease was so new to us and we were unsure of how to tackle the issue. The issue of incivility came when nurses felt frustrated with management and executives. Nurses at neighboring hospitals were receiving hazard. And incentive pay to care for COVID patients, however the nurses at our facility were not.
It was then discovered that many more hospitals in the area were increasing the pay of those caring for these patients,while ours stayed the same. The issue was not about money necessarily. It was the fact that nurses felt that they were literally putting their lives at risk taking care of these sicker patients with no recognition from their leaders, while other hospitals were at least trying to acknowledge the work of their nurses. After some time enough nurses became frustrated that the issue was brought up to multiple managers, and in a matter of weeks, nurses working with COVID patients started receiving hazard pay.
Summary
After completing the workplace inventory, it became clear that areas that deal with nurse´s beliefs. And attitudes towards a workplace have a significant impact on how an organization runs. I have also noticed that at times, when problems arise. Many nurses tend to complain about the issue amongst themselves before presenting it to leaders. It’s important that problems and issues on the units get verbalized to the appropriate personnel so that effective change can take place. Keeping quiet about an issue can decrease nursing satisfaction. Which can also decrease patient satisfaction and ultimately patient care (Clark, 2015)
