Saint Lukes Medical Center - Assignment Example

The nursing department’s operations could be improved using the Damic process (Carpenter Group, 2010) by pinpointing the root cause of problems concerning the backlog of reportorial requirements expected from the head nurses of each unit. Apart from taking charge of governing staff nurses in undertaking basic responsibilities in the delivery of patient care, head nurses are expected to comply with administrative duties of preparing weekly operations reports, payroll, performance evaluations, and inventory of hospital supplies and equipment, among others.

Alexandrou (2011) defined Six Sigma as “a methodology developed by Motorola that describes how the management of product and service delivery should be implemented” (Alexandrou, 2011, par. 1). In this regard, SLMC could improve the delivery of patient care services through DMAIC, to wit:

Measure: How many times do head nurses fail to comply with administrative reports which contribute to incomplete and outdated information needed by management in the decision-making process? Does failure in the submission of required reports contribute to low morale in the unit and the performance appraisals of head nurses? How does the inability to focus on the delivery of patient care affect customer satisfaction, as a whole?

Analyze: Failure of head nurses to comply with reportorial requirements means that insufficient and critical information is not relayed to management in terms of the need to re-order critical supplies; the need to update repair and maintenance of equipment; the proper development and maintenance of staff nurses to design scheduling for training, vacation leaves, as needed. The main goal is to improve the delivery of patient care and upgrade customer satisfaction to a maximum level.

Improve: The administrative tasks should be assigned to unit managers, who are not nurses, to take the responsibilities of managing the unit in terms of compliance with reports, inventory of medical supplies and equipment, performance evaluation, and overseeing the budget of the respective units. Doing this would mean head nurses could focus on patient care and thereby improve customer satisfaction and overall morale.

Control: Apart from compliance with administrative requirements, on one side, and the need to make customers satisfied through efficient and effective delivery of patient care, on the other side, control would come in terms of overall governance by a Department Manager, to ensure that both responsibilities do not contradict nor overlap each other. Read More