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Nursing Practice Management.

Consider the Care Management Systems in a Care Setting.

Summary.

The purpose of this report was to analyse the management systems on a Urology ward. The report explored four key areas, very briefly due to the word constraint. The four key areas were managing the service, managing people, managing resources and managing information. The ward staff were fully committed to the team nursing approach to care delivery and this facilitated efficient and organised care delivery. The report concluded that care was patient-centred and that teamwork was integral to providing this care.

  1. Introduction.

The objective of this report was to consider and analyse the core management systems on a Urology Ward. This report has been written for the assessment of the author’s progress on the Diploma in Higher Education in Nursing course and has been requested by a lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. The available resources utilised by the author for this report included the Urology ward where the author spent eight weeks on clinical placement, the staff on this ward, the internet, relevant managerial textbooks, journals and lecture notes. The main limitation was accessing the resources on the ward as it was a very busy surgical ward, with medical outliers, and it was difficult for the author to take time to access the resources. However the author managed to spend some valuable time with the ward manager and discuss some management issues and observe the different members of the team in carrying out their duties.

  1. Management Theory (Literature Review).

Businessballs.com (2002) argues that Douglas McGregor was an American social psychologist that proposed   the ‘X-Y’ theory of management and motivation (see appendix one). McGregor (cited by BOLA, 2002) describes the ‘X-Y’ concept as the theory that underpins the practices and attitudes of managers with regard to their employees. Huber (2000) states that theory ‘X’ managers assume that employees are lazy, that they dislike responsibility, would rather be directed, oppose change and desire safety. Theory ‘X’ implies that employees are rational and easily motivated (either by money or threat of punishment); therefore managers need to impose structure and control and be active managers (Huber, 2000).

Huber (2000) asserts that the opposing theory, (‘Y’) assumes that people are not lazy and unreliable by nature rather that they are self-directed and creative if well motivated in order to release their true potential. Businenessballs.com (2002) asserts that most managers are inclined towards the ‘X’ theory and usually obtain poor results whereas managers who implement the ‘Y’ theory produce better performance and results thus allowing people to grow and develop (Businessballs.com, 2002).

  1. Care Delivery Approach. (Team Nursing).

Kemp and Richardson (1994) argue that organisation of care should reflect the needs of patients and the beliefs of the nurses and the commitment of the trust or unit to give a quality service. The RCN (1992, Kemp and Richardson, 1994) assert that team nursing is rooted in the principle that a small group of nurses can offer a higher quality of care than if they work in isolation. The RCN (1992, in Kemp and Richardson, 1994) go on to argue that team nursing utilises the skills of all the members of the team so that the patient receives the optimum care available.

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 The Urology ward implemented team nursing because they felt that that their patients received the best possible degree of care from many different members of staff at any one time, instead of restricting care to a smaller number of nurses. The ward also argues that all staff are aware every patients condition using the team nursing approach for the delivery of patient care and are therefore competent in the provision of consistent care for the duration of the patients stay on the ward.

  1. Managing the Service.

Organisations exist for a purpose. Marquis and Huston (2003) argue that ...

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