Impacts of Organizational Culture and Structure on Healthcare Outcomes

The Impact of Organizational Structure on Patient Care Delivery and Outcomes

Over the years, medical service providers have shifted focus to patient-centered outcomes due to increased demand for high-quality care and patient’s awareness of their right to healthcare. As a result, an organization’s structure, referring to the strategies adopted to ensure that an institution is functional and operating as expected, defines the rules, regulations, roles, and responsibilities of leaders and staff toward the outcomes (Liu et al., 2018). Health institutions are complex systems because they constantly interact with their internal and external environments to oversee service providers and assure respectable levels of care. Hence, factors like ownership, mission, vision, leadership, and management significantly affect processes as they dictate the prioritization of objectives and the allocation of resources towards specific results (Berberoglu, 2018). For example, an organization whose mission and goal is to provide nursing education in conjunction with health services might face unique challenges if its structure does not align with its goals. As a result, the organization may showcase poor performance and diminished service delivery.

The Impact of Organizational Culture on Patient Care Delivery Process and Outcomes

An organization’s culture broadly defines the acceptable modes of operation and assigns meaning to certain processes adopted to reach its ultimate goals. Organizational culture in healthcare institutions describes the norms, preferences, and actions taken to ensure that things run smoothly and limit conflicts that arise in high-pressure environments. Thus, culture influences interpersonal relationships, leadership hierarchies, communication channels, decision-making protocols, and individuals’ interactions. According to Nelson et al. (2020), institutional culture takes time to establish and efforts to sustain depending on an organization’s ultimate goals and available resources. In addition, the researchers suggest that positive cultures in medical institutions are associated with reduced falls, diminished mortality, limited hospital-acquired infections, and increased levels of staff and patient satisfaction. On the contrary, negative organizational cultures like poor communication and the lack of accountability can allow medical practitioners to neglect their responsibilities (Berberoglu, 2018). Moreover, negative cultures may not acknowledge the well-being of staff, resulting in reduced motivation and poor service provision. Therefore, advocating for positive cultures like collaboration, effective communication, and good leadership can increase productivity and staff willingness to deliver, thus improving health service outcomes.

Interprofessional Collaboration and its Impact on an Organization’s Culture

Nurses are exposed to diverse and unique environments because they deal with individuals who are desperate for prompt assistance. Subsequently, nursing obligations can be stressful and lead to low productivity due to diminished morale and burnout (Nelson et al., 2020). However, interprofessional collaboration or the collective involvement of individuals from different fields of expertise to aid nursing responsibilities can help nurses to alleviate the challenges associated with catering to the needs of these individuals as it allows the input of different perspectives in addressing health concerns. Interprofessional collaboration acknowledges the essence of other health service providers, communities, families, and caregivers in assuring high-quality services. Through teamwork, practitioners can inspire and educate each other, and rely on each other’s assistance in complicated tasks (Rosen et al., 2018). Thus, interprofessional collaboration fosters strong interdisciplinary relations, which is critical in introducing shared expertise to medical issues for more effective delivery. With time, collaboration improves organizational culture by encouraging individuals to take advantage of the resources around them and the knowledge of others to pursue professional goals. As a result, collaboration is beneficial in complex systems like medical institutions as it maximizes efficiency and encourages continuous development.

The Role of Nurse Leaders in Promoting Teamwork to Enhance Safety

Healthcare institutions constitute high-pressure environments because of increased stress levels and complicated processes associated with morbidity. As a result, nurses and medical staff experience several challenges in multitasking and avoiding mistakes that can deteriorate individuals’ health and service outcomes. Even so, medical errors in institutions are unavoidable as staff members are obligated to juggle several responsibilities (Liu