Journal Week 8

You have 2 cases to respond to this week:

Team’s Case

CASE: THE QUIET BUNCH

You learned during your first week on the job as the newly hired Admitting supervisor that each departmental supervisor was expected to lead one of the hospital’s numerous quality improvement teams. It came as no surprise that the team to which you were assigned was the team your predecessor, the former Admitting supervisor, had served as leader. Your team, you soon learned, consisted of several of your department’s people plus employees from a scattering of other departments.

As you held individual meetings to become acquainted with both your Admitting employees and other members of your team, you were quickly inundated with complaints and other indications of discontent from both Admitting employees and quality team members. There were vocal complaints about the way the admitting department had been run and complaints about the “useless quality improvement team.” From a couple of the employees who served both in Admitting and on the quality team you received complaints about “those who shall remain nameless” who regularly “carry tales to Administration.”

You listened to all the complaints. You detected some common themes in what you were hearing, leading you to believe that perhaps some misunderstandings could be cleared up if some of the issues could be aired openly with each concerned group. So you scheduled two meetings, one for your Admitting staff and one for the quality improvement team. You felt encouraged because a number of individuals had told you they would be happy to speak up at such a meeting.

Your first meeting, held with the Admitting staff, was brief; nobody spoke up, even when urged to do so in the most non-threatening way possible. Your subsequent meeting with the quality team was no better. You had gotten zero discussion going with either group, although before and between the meetings you had been bombarded by complaints from individuals. This left you extremely frustrated because most of the complaints you heard were group issues, not individual problems.

Questions:

• What do you believe can you do to get either or both groups to open up in a group setting about what is bothering them?
• Can you suggest what might lie in the immediate past that could have rendered these employees unwilling to speak up?
• Since you have two groups (with overlapping membership) to be concerned with, where would you initially concentrate your efforts?
• What might you do concerning the charges that someone is “carrying tales to Administration?”

Chapter 15

CASE: SURPRISE!

When the business office employees arrived at the hospital Monday morning they immediately noticed the apparent absence of the office manager. This was not unusual; the manager was frequently absent on Monday. However, he rarely failed to call the department when he would not be there—but on this day he still had not called by noon.

Shortly after lunch, the two working supervisors in the business office were summoned to the administrator’s office. They were told that the office manager was no longer employed by the hospital. They, the two supervisors, were told to look after things for the current week and that a new manager, already secured, would be starting the following Monday. All that the two supervisors were told about the new manager was that it was someone from outside the hospital.

The supervisors were not told whether the former manager resigned or was discharged, nor were they told whether anyone within the department had been considered as a replacement.

Questions:

1. What do you suppose would be the reactions and attitudes of the business office staff upon hearing about this change?
2. What circumstances will most likely prevail during this interim week without a manager? Include in your comments consideration of both morale and productivity.
3. With what attitudes do you suppose the business office staff will receive the new manager?