Having a Successful Career in the Chosen Line of Interest - Essay Example

Sociological Research Report The respondents for this report are siblings. Karen is an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse working at the Emergency Room of a hospital. Her brother George is an architect with a construction company. Their youngest sister is an associate in a law firm. Karen is 43 years old, married with 2 children. She has been working as a surgical ICU (SICU) nurse for 15 years; before that, she was an ER nurse for 2 years, and just after graduating her Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing, she worked as a staff nurse in a surgery ward. George is 40 years old, married with 2 children. He has been working as an architect with a large construction firm for 10 years now. Just after finishing his degree in architecture, he worked with a series of construction companies and only settled with his current employment about 10 years ago. Finally, the youngest sibling is the lawyer Diane. She is 38 years old, married with one child. She has been working as an associate with a law firm for 10 years. She handles mostly criminal defense cases. She has not worked in any other firm since she finished law school. This paper shall revolve around these three respondents who have worked in formal organizations over an extended period of time. It shall discuss the nature of their work and their work dynamic with their co-workers and in the organization itself. It shall also discuss the similarities and differences in the experiences of these three respondents. This report is being conducted in the hope of improving the interview and analytical skills of this student by relating data gathered with class materials Karen (nurse) After finishing her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing, Karen worked for 3 years as a staff nurse in the surgery ward of a community hospital. After gaining enough experience as a nurse, she applied as an ER nurse in a private tertiary hospital. She worked for 3 years there until an opening in the ICU gave her an opportunity to improve her nursing skills. She has been working as a surgical ICU nurse and has been in that job for 15 years now. She worked as an SICU nurse for 8 years until she was promoted as head nurse. She was a head nurse for 3 years until she was promoted as a nurse supervisor. She has been a nurse supervisor for 4 years running. Karen did not change her career because she has long wanted to be a nurse since she was young. More specifically, she wanted to be an ICU nurse. When she was in her 3rd year in college she worked part time as a caregiver for elderly patients. She worked during her free hours for 4 hours every day assisting and caring for elderly patients until she graduated college. Her current job is partly supervisory as she is now the head nurse in the SICU of the hospital. During emergencies and staff-shortages, she assists the staff nurses in caring for patients. She works the night shift (11-7) in the hospital for 8 hours each time; she is on-call every other weekend. She supervises 3 staff members in the ICU during her shift and coordinates with other health caregivers in the management of patients. She also coordinates health services with other departments in the hospital in order to ensure efficient care for patients. She coordinates with the hospital management in determining patient and bed counts in order to ensure that beds are available as and when necessary. The work systems existing in the hospital helps her to accomplish her career goals. She gets to continually hone her nursing skills while she is also improving her supervisory and management skills. She is aiming to master management skills in order to possibly seek advancement management opportunities in the hospital. She also wishes to maintain her clinical skills; hence, she pitches in to assist the staff during emergencies and staff shortages. A difficulty that Karen is currently facing at work is the fact that there is currently a nursing shortage in the hospital. There are 4 beds in the SICU, but there are only 2 staff nurses per shift at any particular time. The hope of obtaining a 1:1 SICU nurse: patient ratio is difficult to achieve with the nursing shortage. The SICU can also only accommodate limited patients (about 4) at any given time. Sometimes, there are patients in need of critical care monitoring which have to be relegated to private or regular rooms because they cannot be accommodated in the ICU rooms. This often makes monitoring difficult. Sometimes, patients are then referred to other hospitals because of shortage of hospital beds in the ICU and in the hospital in general. The co-workers of Karen are very skilled and efficient workers. They are adequately equipped with the essential skills needed in the SICU. Karen works well with her co-workers. They respect her management and supervisory skills and rarely question her decisions or her orders. Her colleagues also cooperate well with her while carrying out their work and carrying out her orders. A lot of her work depends on her co-worker’s contribution. As a supervisor, the efforts taken by her work colleagues in carrying out her orders depends on the cooperation of her staff. Without their cooperation, her job as a supervisor is difficult to carry out and would ultimately be a failure. Karen, in turn, has a lot of support from her immediate supervisors. They support and trust her decisions in the SICU and they are open with their discussion when management decisions need to be made. Karen’s performance is evaluated both by the staff she works with and by her immediate supervisors. Feedback from her staff allows her to improve on skills. During her first year as a supervisor, her staff complained that she did not delegate work to her subordinates and preferred to do things herself. After this feedback, she made adjustments which allowed her to get to know her staff and to delegate the best person for the task. Evaluation from her immediate supervisors allows an assessment of her leadership skills. This evaluation helps her improve areas of her management technique that need improvement. Karen is motivated by the patients themselves, and by the work itself. She is turned-off sometimes by office politics that often diverts much needed attention and resources from the main problems in the hospital. Karen enjoys being among the patients and seeing them improve through care and attention. She, however, sometimes does not enjoy the fact that they have to refuse patients because of staff or bed shortage. Karen believes that in order to make her job enjoyable, she believes that the hospital should ensure that necessary equipment be made available in the hospital. Investments in equipment are time-saving devices. They help make the nurse’s job easier and faster, allowing more time to devote to other patients. The supervisors can help accomplish this aim by making a needs-based approach to healthcare spending. Spending and budgeting of funds should be on what is actually needed, and not on superfluous medical needs. Supervisors are reluctant to spend on new equipment because they are focusing too much on the big picture of fund shortage. They fear to spend on necessary equipment because this might increase the budget shortage. Karen is planning to be promoted to a higher managerial position in the hospital in order to assist the supervisors in hospital management. She believes she can help solve and reduce budget and staff shortage problems in the hospital through application of the needs-based approach to management. She is hoping to retire at the age of 60 and invest her retirement savings with the hospital she is currently working with in the hopes of improving SICU services. George (architect) After finishing up his Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, George worked with a succession of construction firms. He first worked as a contractor with a construction firm for 2 years. He then moved on to another firm to work as a construction supervisor with another construction company for 3 years. Next, he worked as an architect for 3 years in a small construction firm. He set-up his own architecture firm for 2 years until he was offered work with the construction company he is currently working for. When he finished his degree, George was not too sure he actually wanted to practice as an architect. And so he tried other jobs which were still within his skills. Now, his current job includes the designing residential homes in the suburbs. The company he works for right now specializes in residential homes. He is one among 5 architects employed by the company and his job requires him to work with the company’s engineers, contractors, construction workers, home owners, and the company’s owners. The work systems set-up in the company allows advancement opportunities. They allow him to improve his skills as a building planner and as an architect. In recent years, the economic crisis has affected their company. There has been a decreased demand for real estate and for the building of houses. As a result, their company has recently been laying-off some of its workers. His work security has been decreased by the economic crisis. His co-workers all share common goals for the good of the company. They are all equipped with the necessary skills for the company to meet its goals. Much of the work in the company gets done because of the cooperation of the workers with each other. Without the cooperation of the workers, a building is not built properly and sturdily. Substandard work from any of the workers tends to compromise the work of the company as a whole. George gets a lot of cooperation from his supervisor. His supervisor encourages him to pursue his goals by giving him creative license to be more innovative in his trade. His performance is evaluated by his immediate supervisors. This evaluation allows him to assess his skills and evaluate areas of his trade that he needs to improve on. Factors motivating him in his work mostly involve advancement opportunities he wants to explore within the company. He wants to someday establish his construction firm and he wants to get as much experience as he can with his present company in order to run his firm capably. He is de-motivated by the present state of the economy. He knows that he may have financial trouble establishing his own firm in the future if the present economy does not improve. George enjoys the planning stage of his work. He is challenged with the need to see innovative designs in his work; designs that maximize environmental factors. Being less supervised during his work would help improve his work experience. It gives him fewer restrictions in his work and in his planning activities. The turf issues in the company sometimes involve what each worker is assigned to work on. Most of the time, turf conflicts mostly involve activities and work of the engineers. However, these turf conflicts are easily settled by the employees through proper coordination. His future plans include establishing his own construction firm. He has no plans to change careers, only to try his hand at being his own boss. He plans to retire at the age of 60, and hopefully become more involved in his own firm. Diane (lawyer) Diane is a lawyer. She graduated law at the age of 26. During law school, she worked part-time with the legal department of the Department of Social Services. She was a legal researcher. She worked four years with the Social Services until she finished her law degree. After graduating, she applied at a law firm; she has been an associate at such firm for 10 years now. She mostly handles criminal defense cases, those that usually involve murder, assault, and homicide. She is one among 5 associates in the firm, and she is the only lawyer working the criminal defense cases. There are 2 main partners in the firm and they usually determine most of the cases being accepted by the firm. The system in the firm is set-up so that she is having a hard time accomplishing her work goals. There is too much interference from the top partners in the firm. These partners sometimes dictate how a case is to be handled; and they interfere with the case if they believe that the interest of the firm would not be served well. Her co-workers are very ambitious, and they are not above using underhanded means to get ahead in the firm. The work in the firm does not depend too much on cooperation with co-workers. Each lawyer works on his case. She works with her secretary in researching and working her case and the firm does not expect her to ask for help from her colleagues. They see it as a sign of weakness. She also gets limited support from the partners/supervisors in the firm. She only gets assistance from her secretary on clerical matters, but the bulk of the legal work is done exclusively by her. She is supervised by the partners in the firm, and their evaluation affects her work because it sometimes is not objective. The firm partners only think of the glory of the firm, they have limited regard for the cases and situations of their clients and the justice system. She is motivated by challenge. She is constantly challenged to work difficult cases in her work and her thirst to be a better lawyer motivates her. However, she is de-motivated by the fact that she is given limited support by the senior partners in the firm. Her co-workers’ cutthroat methods sometimes also de-motivates her. She likes dealing with clients and being challenged by difficult cases that no one else would touch or work on. In order to make possible a more enjoyable work experience, she believes that there should be more cooperation and coordination between and among the different associates of the firm. Assisting each other will also make possible a more enlightening and less competitive work environment. Their supervisors should be more supportive of the associates in the firm. They should also interfere less with the work of their subordinates. This will give a chance to the associates to work independently and comfortably on their case. Supervisors are being prevented from helping them because they want to control the direction of the firm. They also encourage competition with each other because they believe that a competitive nature is an asset in the legal practice. Turf issues in the firm involve the handling of cases. Since each associate is assigned his or her area of expertise, there is little tolerance for interference from other associates in other areas of expertise. Diane is planning to resign from the firm in a year’s time. She will not change her career but she is planning to establish her own law firm. She plans to retire at the age of 60. The three respondents are similar to each other in the sense that they all have successful careers in their chosen line of interest. Even George, who was a reluctant architect, became successful in his original career choice. The three siblings also did not change careers. They were involved in the same careers they finished in college and they also do not have plans to change their careers in the future. The three siblings also plan to retire at the age of 60, both George and Karen have plans to work and invest their resources in private businesses which are still in line with their chosen careers. Diane is planning to enjoy her retirement work-free. The nature of Karen and George’s work rely much on the close cooperation and coordination with the other workers. Without cooperation, the work would fail and not be productive for the company. Diane’s work can also have a similar nature; however, it can still work well without the cooperation of other co-workers. Hence, the lack of work dynamic is perhaps expected in Diane’s workplace. The supervisors of Karen and George are supportive, but Diane’s supervisors are not, they prefer to engender a cutthroat work atmosphere for Diane and other associates. Read More