Managing Groups to Promote a Just Culture - Essay Example

"Managing Groups to Promote a Just Culture" is a worthy example of a paper on the health system.
A high number of medical errors are because of blame culture in the medical field. There was a need for a just culture to improve the safety and quality of patient care hence its emergence. Just culture requires an understanding of the organizational attributes that cause blame cultures or just cultures. The article will focus on how to manage groups that eventually promote a just culture in the healthcare sector.

Principles of just culture to group management

A Just Culture learns and improves mistakes by openly examining and identifying its weaknesses. Organizations should ensure all the staff members from the surgeons to the nurses and caregivers can air their concerns in case of a mistake to avoid the blame culture. It is important that caregivers feel supported and safe when they are voicing concerns. Surgeons and anesthesiologists go in the operating theatres with an underlying expectation; that has its basis inhabit and training that everyone in the operating room has the correct training. Everyone is expected to manage their specific job without error, but sometimes the error occurs and how they handle the error is important to both the patient and the caregiver (Pepe & Cataldo, 2011). The case should be handled in a just manner and not a blame game for any of the group/team working on the patient.

Role conflict and ambiguity related to an adverse event

Role conflict happens when the employee is not confident that they can achieve their goals. Usually, there is no real and precise briefing of the team before a procedure involving the surgeons, nurse, anesthesiologist, and technicians. In the case of a failure during the surgery, there is an adverse reaction from the staff members, trying to find a person to blame for the surgery when it goes wrong (Tunc & Kutanis, 2009). There is ambiguity and no one knows who made the mistake. The creation of a just culture will ensure all the staff members have a briefing on their roles and duties during surgery (Brookes et al., 2007). It is important so that when there is a problem during the procedure, the analysis is easy and fast, and the person involved learns never to repeat the mistake again. A policy to protect the staff members should be in place in order for the nurses and caregivers to be able to speak up in case of a problem.

Skills and competencies of an effective manager for promoting a just culture

The manager should know the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Clarity of these three leads to effective management. Management should ensure the employee's practice consistency between what lives and what is espoused to be able to have a just culture (Mintzberg, 2009). The management should strategically approach accountability, and then the structures in place to ensure their strategy for the organization manifests itself during judgment. The approach will greatly affect the care providers’ response in case of a problem. Effective communication skills among the staff members and the patient should be encouraged to ensure little to no blame game (Spreitzer & Porath, 2012). Effective communication leads to raising concerns and therefore finding solutions that ensure there is a just culture in the healthcare system.