Let It Pour

Critical Thinking Case Study: Let It Pour

University of Phoenix

MGT350: Critical Thinking: Strategies In Decision-Making

Critical Thinking Case Study: Let It Pour

In the case study titled "Let It Pour: My First Assignment as Executive Assistant", Chris Smith, a soon to be graduate of the University of Phoenix, has just started a new job position as the Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Faith Community Hospital. Despite Chris' enthusiasm and optimism, it seems that the first day on the job will give more to think and work on than anticipated. The first meeting with the CEO, Pat, shed some light on the current situation at the hospital. Pat described to Chris the problems that the hospital is facing with regards to patient care, financial status, and community perception of the hospital. After Pat laid the situation out for Chris, an assignment was given to Chris with a high sense of urgency. The assignment entails putting together a report which will serve as the foundation for a presentation, which the CEO will give during a first-ever all-member staff meeting. The report needs to include all the pertinent information regarding the problems that hospital management is facing without giving too many of the unnecessary and off-putting details. Basically, this report needs to give the CEO some direction on what to say and how to say it. The emphasis of the report should lie in the three main goals of this hospital's management: organizational processes, ethics issues, and communication systems. In reading the case study several times, there are three main problems that can be identified.

The first problem is that the mission statement of the hospital is too broad and vague in its meaning. The mission statement lacks specific interests and goals with regards to all of the hospital's stakeholders. In its current state, the mission statement makes a commitment to the community, but not to the business. What is the true meaning of the mission statement? The way it reads now, it is up to the reader to decide. In turn, because the mission statement is ambiguous, the interpretation of it by the stakeholders is also very diverse. In order to come to a better understanding of the hospital's mission, there needs to be some insight into the actual needs of each of the stakeholders. In this case, the stakeholders are the Board of Directors, the staff, and the patients and their families. A solution into gathering the necessary information would be to hold brainstorming sessions with each of the stakeholder groups. For the Board of Directors session, the CEO should be the one conducting it since the line of communications is open between them. The goal of this session would be to find out exactly what they think the purpose and the values of the hospital are with respect to its survival since it is the one common ground that they all share. Then, Chris can invite himself to staff meetings and have the same brainstorming sessions. During those sessions, the values and needs of the staff with regards to patient care can be explored. Finally, there would need to be focus groups with the patients to ask the same of them. These sessions will generate an abundance of ideas and so multivoting would be an important part of the process. Multivoting would narrow down the list into a manageable piece of the most important parts. Once all of the stakeholders' lists are compiled, then Chris can see if there are any common items between them. Identifying the common ground amongst the stakeholders would give a great starting point in reconstructing the mission statement into one that is more understandable and encompassing of the duties and values of the hospital to the community and the business.

The second problem is that there does not seem to be a set of firm rules and regulations for the staff to follow in critical or uncertain situations. This is again mainly due to each of the staff members values and beliefs regarding patient care. There are many symptoms of this problem at Faith Community Hospital, such as directives not being followed per the patients' wishes, unauthorized payment plans, unauthorized free consultations, and the like. A solution to this problem would be to put together a Standard Operating Procedure for each of the hospital departments and positions. A Standard Operating Procedure, or SOP, is a set of instructions and steps that someone follows in order to perform their job. To begin the compilation of the SOP, each staff member will need

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