Critical Thinking Case Study

Introduction

Just starting a new position as executive assistant, working directly for the CEO of Faith Community Hospital I receive

my first assignment as executive assistant. I am charged with solving specific problems, delivering the solutions and describing my rationale for my proposed solutions, my boss, the CEO of the Faith Community Hospital is requiring the information next Monday. In my following report I will take steps to identify the problems and to solve each of the problems described using the critical thinking skills I have learned at the University of Phoenix. I will be using my decision making skills along with a brainstorming technique to help me solve these problems. The two problems that I have identified are as follows: The first problem I have identified to solve is the moral and ethical differences our practitioners have towards administering care to patients resulting in different levels of care provided by different practitioners. The second problem that I have identified is our increased costs per patient. I need to brainstorm what we can do to reduce or avoid the potential continuing increased costs.

Critical Thinking Case Study

To begin, I need to study the problems thoroughly and efficiently. Then I will need to isolate each of the problems that the CEO and I discussed in the meeting. I will need to analyze each problem and evaluate alternatives for each problem. After that is done, I will make recommendations with corrective actions prepared for the CEO by Monday.

In my CEO's assignment I have identified the two separate problems and I will be evaluating them each independently.

Problem #1

First, I have to identify the problem. The hospital and regulators are seeing inconsistent decisions that are implemented for the patients based on the particular doctors' or nurses morals, and ethical beliefs. As the CEO said "On one hand, we have particular patients who refuse to take certain medical services, and on the other hand, particular staff members who refuse to provide certain services." The doctors are not following any set standards for issuing care for our patients. This problem needs to be immediately rectified.

To solve this issue I need to break down the problem into its different elements. I have identified the problem, now I have to define the goals.

Goals

The goals that we need to accomplish are to have each practitioner administer consistent care for our patients regardless of personal morals and ethics. We also need to make sure that no patient is refused care, regardless of the doctors' beliefs, medical coverage or lack of coverage. Now that goals have been identified we need determine what effect this problem is having on our patient service level.

Effects of the Problem

We have four separate effects of our problem. The first effect is the negative media coverage that hospitals are receiving due to inconsistent care. This is a problem that is connected to our own doctors' and nurse ethical, personal and moral beliefs. This a major factor that hospital are allow 100,000 patients die each year from care related issues in our nation's hospitals.

Second, if we are refusing care to patients due to lack of medical insurance, we are in violation of non-profit laws requiring lifesaving care to all patients. This could result in criminal charges against board members and individual practitioners. This could also result in negative media coverage of hospital policies.

A third effect of the problem is that outside agencies may become more involve in day-to-day operations of the hospital by enforcing federal standards of healthcare. They will become harder to work with. Negative media attention could also force agencies such as Child protective Services (CPS) to not bring their cases to our hospital if they and the public think that we will not treat patients to their liking or direction. We currently have a case where "Child Protective Services is in the process of taking custody of a baby and threatening to file charges against us because of the way we provided services or, as they allege, failed to provide services.

The fourth effect of the problem I have identified is the possibility of each patient receiving care that is different, depending on which doctor or nurse is assigned to the patient. Each patient needs to have the same treatment and care from any and all of our doctors and nurses, regardless of the doctors and nurses ethical and moral beliefs. This directly affects patient costs and mortality rates,

The next step to solving our problem is to examine solutions to the the problem.

Alternative solution

I have brainstormed three possible solutions to our problem. The first is to create standard operating procedures (SOP's) for all of our nurses, doctors and administrators to follow. SOP are a nationwide standard for hospitals and most healthcare institutions. A panel of doctors, nurses, administrators, and lawyers must create SOP's. A member of the board should provide oversight to the group to keep all practitioners on track and make sure that they keeping with the hospitals general principals, patients interests, and keep with the medical boards guidelines. These SOP's must be worded so that all doctors, nurses, and adminstrators in our hospital understands exactly what care must be provided to patients every individual patient case.

The next possible solution to our problem is to launch a advertising campaign to emphasize the quality of care provided in Faith Hospital. We can use some or all of the available media outlets for our promotional campaign. Our campaign must counter the newscasts that hospitals are dangerous, emphasizing caring quality care in our hospital.

The third solution that I have brainstormed is terminating employees who are not following the law. If the hospital can control the hiring practices, we can hire people that are closely match our hospital's ethical and moral beliefs. This would make our care that the hospital disburses to our patients more consistent. It would also make for an environment that would be better to work in for the doctors and nurses. Everybody would be on the same mindset as far as practices and procedures.

Now that I have framed our possible solutions, we have to evaluate the impacts of our alternative solutions. I will evaluate all of the possibilities of each solution and see which solution will work the best for our situation.

Impacts

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