In healthcare, conveying genuine gratitude for staff contributions can have a transformative impact on morale, engagement, and overall workplace culture. By leveraging emotional intelligence (EI), leaders can tailor their expressions of appreciation to align with each individual’s unique personality, making their “thank you” more meaningful. Applying EI principles allows healthcare leaders to go beyond simple recognition and connect with their teams in true and personalized ways.
Tag: hospital productivity
Trick or Treat? Un-masking Common Leadership Challenges
Fun fact: some of the most common Halloween costume themes actually parallel the challenges healthcare leaders routinely face. This Halloween, to avoid being “spooked,” it is important to uncover what lies beneath the surface to develop a proper response. Identifying the reason for the “mask” by unveiling the issues behind it will help to create permanent change and sustained improvement.
The Little Leader that Could
Mindset is a critical component to effective leadership, and having the right outlook can make managing the changes in healthcare less difficult. A positive attitude promotes accountability, improves communication, and helps to set realistic expectations, both for the team and the leader. The business of healthcare is unpredictable, with new mountains to climb at every turn.
The Productivity Party – Part One!
During the summer months, there is a lot to celebrate. Whether the gathering is to recognize an achievement, a milestone, or simply to share a bit of comradery, parties, like productivity, bring people together. This year, while you are toasting a birthday, the great weather, or just spending time with family and friends, consider serving up one of the ALTIUS team’s productivity-approved cocktails/mocktails! Margarita Refreshing and bold, this zesty party staple has a long history, likely dating back to the 1930s, when there were no bottled mixes or blenders.
Where Have all the Nurses Gone?
Long before the pandemic began, a shift started occurring in healthcare; an evolution of the nursing profession that introduced new opportunities to licensed staff, deviating from traditional patient care. While these innovative roles are enticing and serve to strengthen hospital operations by expanding skill sets and meeting previously unaddressed needs, these positions are creating further strain on care delivery. Staff shortages were already plaguing the industry and now nursing advancement is another element that organizations must navigate.
Productivity Checklist
This time of year, checklists help manage the back-to-school madness. They provide structure and direction on preparing for the coming year, especially while parents and students alike are still preoccupied with maximizing the waning days of summer. Checklists are also effective in other areas – they transcend in application and detail the elements required and/or steps to be taken in order to reach a goal.
Productivity and Forecasting
Demand in healthcare, by nature, can be hard to predict. A fundamental part of care delivery is being prepared for the unexpected, whether that be the effects of a natural disaster, large-scale safety event, or global pandemic. However, that does not mean that daily staffing patterns and annual budgets should be buffered to accommodate the “what-ifs.
Productivity: A Love/Hate Relationship
Love is in the air, and in healthcare, change is always on the horizon. A focus on productivity and workforce optimization may be part of your organization’s 2021 initiatives, but you may be personally struggling with getting behind the proposed strategies. You are not alone – many industry leaders and professionals have a love/hate relationship with performance improvement.
Minimum Staffing v. Minimal Staffing
Many healthcare leaders believe that the term “minimum staffing” is the result of performance improvement initiatives aimed at doing more with less. It is actually a critical component of any department’s operations and should be considered in all productivity strategies and staffing-based decisions. Minimum staffing levels indicate the number of manhours across each job code category in a department, regardless of patient census or workload, necessary to operate safely and efficiently.
How do you determine the “right” productivity target?
At ATLIUS, we stress the importance of having the right person, in the right place, performing the right task, for the right clinical outcome. This approach is then ultimately supported by having the right productivity target in place. The question is, how do you determine each departmental target so that it results in the highest level of efficiency and the best overall outcomes? While there are various ways to establish productivity targets, we have seen the strongest performers follow our primary approach to target setting: varying targets by department.