PERSONAL REFLECTIONS 2

Personal Reflections

The organizational problems that I have identified are patient injuries in hospitals and
infection-related readmissions. These are problems that are common in many hospitals. They not
only increase healthcare costs but also reduce quality of life of patients.

I have personally experienced these two problems in the course of my work. I have
worked in a hospital facility that had abnormally high early readmission rates especially for
congestive heart failure. It was a particularly stressful situation because most of the patients have
extremely low survival rates.

In the same facility patient safety was not taken very seriously. There were, therefore,
many patients who suffered injuries while at the hospitals. Most of these injuries were
unavoidable. With better communication among the healthcare teams, a mistake made by one
person could easily have been identified and corrected by another person (Baker et al., 2016).
However, there was poor communication and coordination among the various healthcare
professionals at the hospital. Rules were also not strictly adhered to. The results of these factors
were that patients took longer to recover, some developed dangerous complications, while others
even died.

My experience with these problems has made me to strongly believe in prioritizing
patient health and safety, and strictly adhering to laid down rules and procedures. I have also
learnt the importance of having effective communication within healthcare teams. With these
principles guiding me in my future career, I believe that I will be able to avoid or reduce
instances of patients under me getting injured or being readmitted in hospital.

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Additionally, reflecting on these two problems shows the importance of systems thinking
approach in solving healthcare problems in hospitals. With this approach a problem is not looked
at in isolation, it is considered part of an element interacting with other elements in the system
(Phillips et al., 2016). Based on these systems thinking approach, I believe that the two problems
that I have reflected upon could have been prevented or significantly reduced through a system
that prioritizes patient safety at the hospital and focuses on providing highest quality of services.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS 4

References

Baker, D. P., Salas, E., Battles, J. B., & King, H. B. (2016). The relation between teamwork and
patient safety. In Handbook of human factors and ergonomics in health care and patient
safety (pp. 214-227). CRC Press.

Phillips, J. M., Stalter, A. M., Dolansky, M. A., & Lopez, G. M. (2016). Fostering future
leadership in quality and safety in health care through systems thinking. Journal of
Professional Nursing, 32(1), 15-24.