RUNNING HEAD MY WORK ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT 2 POST 1 WHY ✓ Solved

Determining the civility of a workplace is something that I have not considered doing before this assignment. After completing the Clark healthy workplace inventory, I found that my workplace is moderately healthy, scoring 71 (Clark, 2015). While completing the assessment, I found myself thinking extremely hard on the questions. I often had to think about how the questions have affected me personally, the unit, then the organization. Based on the assessment, I will say that the workplace is both civil and not civil.

Clark (2015) explained that for a workplace to be considered healthy, it must have skilled communication, true collaboration, effective decision making, appropriate staffing, meaningful recognition, and authentic leadership according to the American Association of Critical Nurses (p.2). Based on this, I think my unit specifically needs to work on all of them but mainly on skilled communication.

Incivility in the Workplace and How It Was Addressed

Since working on the unit, I have found that leadership finds it extremely hard to address issues. For example, when a nurse is late multiple times to work, they won’t address the issue, yet expect the charge nurses to address it. Although this seems to be a great way of approaching the issue, it becomes hard when they feel like they are not supported. There have been multiple complaints to leadership about lateness, but this seems to be an ongoing issue because it hasn’t been addressed by the manager.

Leadership often acts as if the issue does not exist, especially when they are friends with the individual. It is important for leaders to be transparent with staff and to treat them equally. By not addressing issues at the workplace, leaders can negatively impact employee physical and mental health, job satisfaction, productivity, and commitment to the work environment (Clark, 2013). To address this, I spoke with the manager, expressing my concerns with another staff member. I explained that it was unfair to hold others accountable and that everyone needed to be treated equally despite the length of time you have known them personally.

Although this issue was talked about with leadership, it is still present as I have observed people coming to work 15 minutes late without any consequences. Due to the inability to approach staff and address issues, many have stopped approaching leadership whenever there is a concern, thinking that it won’t be addressed. Since this issue is ongoing and hasn’t been resolved, Griffin and Clark (2014) suggest cognitive rehearsal in addressing incivility and bullying behaviors, as it has been proven to be an effective way to control the work environment.

Workplace Environment Assessment

The results of my work environment showed an incivility score of 54. According to Clark (2015), this means that it’s an unhealthy organization and hence very uncivil. I was surprised that I have not paid enough attention to some very important details about my organization. For example, the issue of workload in our organization has been a significant problem, the ratio of nurses to patients has always been very high due to a lack of enough nurses to work; this has been a considerable challenge. A comprehensive mentoring program for all employees also lacks in our organization.

The lowest score was communication at all levels of the organization. Effective communication in health care is a mainstay of patient safety and staff perception of a healthy work environment (Jones et al., 2019). Communication in our organization is not utilized well; for example, the chain of command is not effectively followed due to disorganized problem-solving techniques. A lack of skilled communication in healthcare settings has been shown to negatively affect patient safety and quality (Jones et al., 2019).

A healthy work environment has been described as a workplace that is positive, supportive, safe, collaborative, empowering, motivational, collegial, professional, respectful, caring, and satisfying (Saunders et al., 2021). One idea I believed before conducting this assessment and was confirmed is the lack of opportunities for promotion and career advancement. In our organization, the chances of getting promoted are very low due to the slow progress in the growth of the organization and the high turnover rate of employees.

Meaningful recognition promotes job satisfaction, personal psychological well-being, and less job stress, which all contribute to establishing a healthy work environment (Saunders et al., 2021). I experienced incivility in my workplace two weeks ago when I complained about the workload to my supervisor. We were short two nurses on the unit, and that affected the nurse-to-patient ratio. The supervisor only stated that she would communicate with the manager but did not get any help for me. I was forced to work with a lot of patients, which was not safe for me or the patients. I ended up contacting the manager about the issue, and I am still waiting to hear back.

The positive results of authentic leadership include optimism, trust, work satisfaction, engagement, low turnover, and creativity (Saunders et al., 2021). I hope to implement this lesson in my organization if I ever get a chance to.

References

• Broome, M., & Marshall, E. S. (2021). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
• Clark, C. M. (2013). Creating and sustaining civility in nursing education (2nd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.
• Clark, C. M. (2015). Conversations to inspire and promote a more civil workplace. American Nurse Today, 10(11), 18–23.
• Griffin, M., & Clark, C. M. (2014). Revisiting cognitive rehearsal as an intervention against incivility and lateral violence in nursing: 10 years later. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 45(12), 535–542.
• Jones, L., Cline, G. J., Battick, K., Burger, K. J., & Amankwah, E. K. (2019). Communication Under Pressure: A Quasi-Experimental Study to Assess the Impact of a Structured Curriculum on Skilled Communication to Promote a Healthy Work Environment. Journal for Nurses in Professional Development, 35(5), 248–254.
• Saunders, J., Sridaromont, K., & Gallegos, B. (2021). Steps to Establish a Healthy Work Environment in an Academic Nursing Setting. Nurse Educator, 46(1), 2–4.