Organizational Culture Can Help Reduce Burnout in Hospitals

Organizational Culture Can Help Reduce Burnout in Hospitals

Question #1

Assume you are in charge of socializing the newly hired nurses at a local hospital. What steps would you take to ensure that they understand the hospital’s organizational culture? How would you help them understand how to manage stress on a daily basis so as to prevent burnout later in their careers? Explain.

Work related stress is an issue that many organizations in the healthcare industry struggle with and can be an extremely costly problem with far reaching consequences including decreased retention rates, increased healthcare costs and poor work performance. Ensuring new employees understand and are committed, i.e. embedded; to the organizational culture is a means to reduce work-related stress. Recent studies have analyzed ways to help employees to become embedded in the organization and their communities (Mitchell, Holtom, B.C., Lee, T.W., & Sablynski, 2001). It is a costly problem and if not addressed could cause tremendous issues with dramatic consequences.

In order to embed newly hired nurses into the organizational culture a comprehensive orientation and mentorship program that communicates the organizational and cultural values and steps of the socialization process. Involving experienced nurses and doctors to serve as role models and trainers that develop into mentors will foster relationships that will give employees an outlet to seek advice and guidance. The process would include both formal and informal activities on a group and individual level in order to assist them to develop healthy relationships and include feedback mechanisms in order to monitor progress. A detailed training program would also be included that would help ensure a complete understanding of hospitals policies and procedures. I would include sessions that discuss the value of stress level management and the value of having an outlet within personal life that is separate from their work life as a means to preventing burnout later in their careers. Training would include lessons that address the levels of stress and how to recognize the differences between healthy and unhealthy levels of stress. Thru fully developed relationships with peers and mentors and an employee that has been embedded into the hospital’s culture stress and burnout should be markedly reduced.

Question #2

Hospital environments are more stressful in nature than the work environments found in many other organizations. What are some of the unique challenges that hospitals face when attempting to create a supportive organizational culture that helps employees reduce and manage their stress levels?

Hospitals are unique in comparison to most work environments in two primary ways. First of all, the nature and importance of the work