Conflict Resolution

Today we didn't discuss conflict resolution, we actually talked about the future of nursing. The conversation regarding diversity was a good one for me. I had never thought about the need to have cultural diversity in employees. I can see how experiencing patients with different cultural backgrounds is beneficial and can help us be better nurses but I never really thought about how coworkers of different ethnicity could benefit my practice.  The conversation regarding the lack of voice that nurses have and the need for greater education was interesting as well. I'm not quite sure how nurses change the way they are viewed from a leadership standpoint but it is something to keep in mind when trying to institute change.

Motivation

I actually don't remember discussing motivation last week but I thought our guest speaker was great. Her story of how she got where she is can be somewhat motivating and gives hope for what can be attained as a manager. She had a fantastic and cheerful personality that is contagious. She seemed genuinely sold on the key concepts and philosiphies that IHC stands for and was excited to represent her employer in a positive manner. This type of personality is difficult to find and even harder to teach. It is something that usually comes naturally and she has it. No wonder she is in the position she is in today. She probably deserves every bit of success she has achieved. Self motivation is key as a manager because if you can't motivate yourself then nobody else probably will do it. As a manager you have to have enough motivation to push yourselves and those you manage. a lot of the managerial process really is just helping others to be excited about their job and motivated to do better.

Quality

I am so lost on these hournal entries and can't remember which week we discussed quality or if we ever have addressed the subject completely. We have however discussed leadership qualities and the importance of being thorough. Quality comes in many facets including the quality of our work, quality of our relationships at home and work, and the quality of the organization we choose to work for and people we associate with. These are all things that are important to keep in mind moving forward in our careers. Creating an aura of quality in our life will allow us to create more meaningful experiences for ourselves as well as those we manage and or lead.

Risk Management

This class was good for helping me to understand the role of risk managers. There are a lot of items that I never had any idea fall under the role of risk managers. Risk managers responsibilities include preparing for the safety of patients, employees, and hospital visitors. They also have to prepare to minimize risk for the company as well. This is one heck of a balancing act. Not sure I would want to have the job of a risk manager but it is good to have some basic knowledge and experience in this field if I ever end up in management. There are a lot of issues that I need to keep in mind in order to minimize risk and legal liability. I felt the information was good but I do have to say that the presentation was a little dry. The presenter seemed super nice and considerate of others but not a very dynamic personality.

Future of Nursing Reflective Journal

Today was a good class. Obviously answering the question what did you expect is jsut crazy because given the way things go in class I never know what to expect. I did get some good information regarding the requriements and benefits of being an educator and doing travel nursing. I also enjoyed the conversation about what the future of nursing is going to be. We are constantly taught in nursing school to use critical thinking but for some reason nurses only tend to critically think when dealing with patients, their families, and other health care workers. We are terrible at using critical thinking skills to change our future. Instead of adapting to changes and looking for ways to make our future better we tend to complain about what is owed to us and why we deserve more. Now is the time to determine what we want our future to be like and start moving in that direction. You have to create a plan and then work to implement it. It will almost never be easy but in the end if you reach your goals it will be owrth it.

Strategic Planning

I missed this weeks discussion but from what I understand the guest speaker spent some time discussing why we want to get a bachelors degree. It was the exact subject we had to give a presentation on recently. When I did my research I found it interesting that if you look at it from a strictly financial point of view most bachelors nurses will not make more money than associates nurses over their lifetime and the cost of the extra education is not worth it if you plan to work a floor somewhere for your whole life. The bachelors has value in the fact that it will make you more competitive in job interviews, allows you to consider management  positions, and is the required stepping stone for APRN. When I got done doing my research I basically felt that if you were going on to get your bachelors you would be crazy not to continue your education further. This was my future plan anyway but it just reinforces it even more.

Change

I had no idea what to expect from today's lecture. Although I had to leave class a little early today I really enjoyed the second video that we watched. It was easy to see the logic in some of her conclusions when you step back and look at it. The social norms idea caught me off guard but after thinking through it a little it makes complete sense and is easy to observe in society. The discussion on the change of scrubs was a good one. It was easy to see how people have a hard time with change, especially when you see it with something as dumb as scrub colors. I have found that the more time nurses have to just talk the more they like to complain, especially when it involves change. If you can keep nurses busy they fill more fulfilled in their work and they don't have time to single out everybody's flaws. I am not afraid of change but it is different to allow change to occur than it is to be the one implementing the change. It can be very stressful to try and implement change as a manager but I think I will be able to manage it.

Career Development

This was an interesting unit. I enjoyed the discussion about FNP's and career possibilities moving forward. The information about additional education and job potential was informative and timely considering I have recently been looking into NP programs to decide if that is something I might be interested in. I also felt the career goals and planning discussion in class was good. I feel that I have a lot of the pieces plugged in already but most of my plan is only one to two years right now without an overall end goal in mind. I'm really struggling to decide what it is I want to be doing in 5 years but it is time to buckle down and get it figured out. The sooner I start the better.

Budgeting

The class on budgeting and time management was good. I don't feel like I learned anything new but it was a good reminder of how much time is actually available to me. I once kept a log for a week of everything I did and for how long. About 3 days into it I realized how much time was spent on non productive things. It is good to make the most of our time but I think sometimes the non productive things we do are necessary to keep our sanity. It's just a matter of balancing the two and making sure that we use time effectively. I also think it is important to be flexible with our plans ans no that no matter how well we plan some things will always change. We need to be prepared to deal with that and not let it become a major crisis in our life.

Ethics 2/18/2014

Today I expected to learn about ethics committees and how they operate. I think I was able to get an idea of how an ethics committee is formed, what their purpose is, and how to operate one. I also received answers to some of my questions in regards to who the committee reports to and how much say or power they have in the final decision. I think it is helpful to understand circumstances in which we would call for an ethics committee so that we can be prepared to make that call. I have not run into anything that I felt needed this type of intervention yet but when I do I feel I will be better prepared to handle it. I enjoyed the scenarios and the discussion that comes from them. I also liked the follow up in class even though it was shortened a little. It is good to evaluate our own ethics and standards to decide if we can operate and provide quality care under circumstances that may present us with negative feelings regarding our assignments as nurses.

Performance Appraisal Interview

For this assignment I spoke with my neighbor who is a sales manager for a company that sales large pieces of equipment to municipalities and general contractors for road construction projects. Due to his position he is responsible for evaluating the effort and effectiveness of his sales people. The questions that were asked were as follows:
What consitutes acceptable performance by your sales people?
How do you pay them? (Commission or salary)
If they don't meet their quota what are the repercussions?
How do you keep them motivated?
Are you succesful in retaining good sales people long term?
The answers I received seemed fairly typical of what most good businesses do to be successful. He described the performance requirements for sales people in his organization as completing a minimum of 100 cold calls per day, scheduling at least 10 appointments per week for his demo rep who is in the field, setting weekly goals and explaining how they will be achieved, and closing at least 2 deals per month. He explained to me that employees are given the option to be paid straight commission at a much higher rate or take a reasonable salary plus a small commission. The salary option is meant to help sales people get trained and comfortable before they go to straight commission, but he told me that most employees never leave the comfort of this option even though they could potentially make much more money on straight commission. Only the best sales people venture into the straight commission and he said they are the ones that show the highest job satisfaction. Each employee has to attend a monthly sales meeting to review their quota. If they ahve fallen short new goals and expectations are set with additional emphasis from the sales manager on meeting weekly goals and then monthly goals. If a sales person goes 3 months without meeting their quota they are put on probation and have 2 months to get back on track or they are let go. He explained to me that in order to keep people motivated and happy with the company so that they will want to stay. Bonuses are handed out each month for those who achieve a higher standard and every year the top 3 sales people all receive an all expense paid trip to places like cabo san lucas or a cruise or something of that nature. For those who are struggling he said he usually tries to work with them on a weekly basis but he will only do this for so long. If an employee can't motivate himself most of the time then he won't cut it as a sales person. He said that he usually knows in the first 2 months if they wil make it but the company policy makes him wait at least 5 months to let the non-productive ones go.

Organizational Structure

I am not sure that I come to class expecting to learn anything specific anymore. I think that what I learned from class today is that nurses can find positions in pretty much any part of the organizational structure. I also had a lot of fun watching the video about men and women. Not sure how much of it is true but it sure seemed to hit the target on a few things. I enjoy the information we get from this class and I really enjoy the some of the fun things we do.

Performance Appraisal & Problem Employee Reflective Journal

I have learned to come to class with no expectations of what I would learn. Today I learned a little bit about the purpose of performance appraisals and what things may or may not be important to employees when trying to recruit and retain them. Knowing this information at this point helps me to know how to approach my supervisors when it comes to performance appraisals.  It also gives me an idea of how I am being perceived as an employee. Maybe this will have greater application for me later on but given my current position I am looking at it more from the side of the employee than the manager. As far as how I felt about the material, I would say I don't have any + or - feelings either way. It is all part of the game and the sooner I learn how to play it the better off I will be.

Team Building

Before class today I did not know what to expect for sure but I was pretty certain we would be doing acitivities similar to what we did. These type of projects are helpful in teaching people how to work within a team and allow people to put leadership skills into practice. I had an interesting experience doing the blind folded activity where we had to have another person guide us on a long walk. We had an odd number of people in our group and decided to have one person guide two of us at a time. We realized quickly that we would never complete the activity if he was trying to guide both of us at the same time. So the two of us that were blind locked arms and moved together as we followed the other persons instructions. As we were coming to the very end of the exercise Shaun yelled out that nobody should be touching any body else. We had been locked together for at least 15 minutes at this point and we tried letting go and it was amazing how much less secure both of us felt when we didn't have the other one there. Although I was relying on one person to guide me because I couldn't see, I felt a strong obligation to help the other blind individual. It was my job to make sure I felt for door ways or tripping hazards first and then I would guide her through those obstacles. There was no determing factor for why I led and she followed, it just sort of happened naturally. I started out first and felt comfortable in that role and she followed and seemed to be comfortable with her role as well. It was strange how responsible I felt for her well being, even though I was unable to see myself. I enjoyed the activities as a whole and appreciate the light hearted atmosphere that the class offers.

Hiring

Going into this weeks class I had expected for some reason to learn better job interview skills from the perspective of the person being interviewed and not from the perspective of the interviewer. I expected to learn tactics for interviewing and what type of questions to expect to be asked. Instead I got a whole new outlook on how to interview for a potential job candidate. I have hired employees before but never as part of a committee and my purpose for hiring was different than it is for health care. The thought of making sure you know what your looking for in a question was a great thing for me to learn. I have often times asked a question without knowing what I was looking for and just assumed if I asked it and got the right answer I would then know that was what I wanted out of the question. If given the opportunity to work in a position where I am in charge of hiring I think this will help a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed this class and it was a fun day.

Leadership Reflective Journal Entry

Going into today's class I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't sure if we were going to get the boring good leaders have certain qualities speech or, this is what is expected of you in the healthcare industry as a leader speech. I was pleasantly surprised today with the information presented. I really enjoyed the discussion on leadership qualities and it was interesting to see how many people have never really been in any kind of leadership position and haven't had a chance to determine what their leadership style is. The five levels of leadership speech started to lose my interest about half way through but I found most of the information pretty interesting. I'm not convinced that the jump from level 3 to level 4 and 5 is really that big. I kind of feel like when you attain level 3 you usually are at levels 4 & 5 at the same time. The one question I had when going through this information is can this type of leadership be taught or is it just something that comes natural. I think we can learn to be better leaders but I wonder if the best leaders are the ones who have a knack for it. I feel like I am good at looking at individuals and determining what their strengths and weaknesses are but I think evaluating others and determining how they see you is a helpful skill that I could put into practice. I'm actually interested to see where this class goes, it appears to me that it is going to be more fun than I had initially anticipated.