Toenails in the corner - Case Study Example

Toenails in the corner In your opinion, is there prejudice or oversensitivity in this situation?
There is prejudice in this situation by the doctor. This is because the doctor has formed an opinion about the kind of roles the nurse should be performing and which are not included in her work as a qualified Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN). In this private practice, there is a janitor and the janitor’s roles are specified and include cleaning. It should therefore be the janitor’s role to clean up the toenails after the nurse has cut them from the patient.
Oversensitivity is to be ruled out because the roles of the nurse had been clearly specified by the doctor who is her employee and just required her to cut the toenails but not carry out any cleaning after that. The nurse carrying out the cleaning role half-heartedly is therefore justified because it is not in her job-description and there is a better qualified individual to carry out the cleaning role other than her.
Was the situation managed poorly?
The situation was managed poorly by both the doctor and the nurse because the roles of the nurse were clearly specified but the doctor wanted her to perform additional roles not specified and not in line with her career simply because she is a woman and is therefore supposed to clean up despite the private practice having a janitor to carry out that work.
In any organization, if the members of the organization are to work in harmony and without any employee or even the employer complaining, the roles and duties of each and every individual have to be clearly specified. If the roles are not clearly defined, there is bound to be role confusion or role disambiguity and which in turn leads to stress on one party at the expense of the other (s).
The nurse did not have the will power to stand up against her boss the doctor and tell her about the chores she was carrying out that were not in her job description. This may be majorly because the employer-employee relationship in that organization was purely work-related and hence making it hard for the employees to air out their grievances or opinion to their employer. In such a situation, the nurse was afraid of fighting for her working rights because she may fear the implications that might result.
This is a poor way to manage such a situation because the employee (nurse) will continue suffering alone and which in the end may result to poor performance on her job due to the stress and the job dissatisfaction she is deriving from her unspecified chores. On the other hand, the doctor will continue complaining about Nurse Walsh’s attitude without knowing the real reason behind it and maybe in the end get really tired of the attitude and fire her.
Communication is therefore the key to a healthy organization where both the employers and employees are satisfied and hence performance will be excellent always. Without good communication between the employers and employees, misinterpretation, overreaction and other negative consequences that would have been avoided might result.
Works Cited
Tetlock, P. E and Mitchell, G. Implicit Bias and Accountability Systems: What Must Organizations Do to Prevent Discrimination? Retrieved from: http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0- 70649098150&origin=inward&txGid=idvqajJgyvptMS3oQ825SAD%3a2 Read More