Journaling provides a valuable tool for recording, reflecting on, and reviewing your learning. This approach provides an opportunity for you to “connect the dots” and observe the relationships between

Journaling provides a valuable tool for recording, reflecting on, and reviewing your learning. This approach provides an opportunity for you to “connect the dots” and observe the relationships between and among activities, interactions, and outcomes.

Unlike a personal journal of thoughts and feelings, this Leadership Journal is a record of your activities, assessments, and learning related to this academic experience.

Journal entries should include a record of the number of hours spent with your nurse leader each week.

Write a journal entry of 1,000-1,500 words on the subject of power, including the following:

1. Provide observations and thoughts on the activities in Weeks 1-2. 

· Why all nurses should be considered leaders and the secular approach to leadership in comparison to servant leadership

2. Identify your given “power” at your workplace or in your professional life. What is your greatest contribution in the lives of others?

3. Find three people with whom you interact professionally and ask them to affirm the influence you bring to their lives. How and why did you choose the individuals? What pearls of wisdom did they share that you had not considered?

4. Reflect on at least two things you learned from the “Issue of Power” video.

Consider the involvement of insurance companies, the big business of healthcare, and cost-cutting activities. Explain what you believe is meant by a cardiac patient who, upon meeting his surgeon for t

1. As one learns about all of the wonders of modern technologies, how would you respond (positive or negative, and why) to Dr. Victoria Sweet who wrote: In trying to get control of healthcare costs by emphasizing “efficiency,” we’ve headed down a wrong path. Medicine works best—that is, arrives at the right diagnosis and the right treatment for the least cost—when the doctor has enough time to do a good job, and pays attention not only to the patient but to what’s around the patient. Dr. Sweet calls this approach Slow Medicine, and she believes that, put into wider practice, it would be not only more satisfying for patient and doctor, but also less expensive.
2. Consider the involvement of insurance companies, the big business of healthcare, and cost-cutting activities. Explain what you believe is meant by a cardiac patient who, upon meeting his surgeon for the first time prior to surgery, says to the surgeon, “Hello, sir. I’m Mr. John Smith, husband of Mary Smith and father of Jeanette Smith. I’m a carpenter who has built close to 80 new homes over the last 20 years with these two hands. I’m not the heart attack in Room 403.” and why.
3. It’s been said that true quality improvement is only possible when those involved in the process can be completely honest with one another. In the case of healthcare, when mistakes cause serious pain, suffering, and possibly death, how is true quality improvement possible? When leveraging 6 Sigma, is total honesty really necessary? Explain.
4. Everyone agrees that reading the Electronic Healthcare Records is much easier than the hand-written entries of old, but many complain that too many are focusing too much on the computer screen instead of on the human right in front of them. Is this just lack of skill or training? Is it poor computer system design? Is it just the nature of the transition from the old way to the new? Is patient care suffering because computers and all the displays, alerts, and alarms distract us?

Recognizing innate talents is critical not only for leveraging one’s own strengths, but for fostering a workplace environment in which everyone’s contributions are respected and maximized. This is

Recognizing innate talents is critical not only for leveraging one’s own strengths, but for fostering a workplace environment in which everyone’s contributions are respected and maximized. This is valuable because “the opportunity for individuals to play to their strengths most of the time is the key factor that shows the greatest correlation to outstanding performance in the widest range of business outcomes including profits, productivity, customer satisfaction, and safety and employee retention” (Buckingham, 2011, p. 5).

Charged with the complex and considerable goal of promoting health care quality and safety, nurse leader-managers must learn how to draw upon each person’s strengths to foster collaboration toward this shared purpose.

In this Discussion, you assess your own strengths and consider how they can be applied in a health care organization to improve quality and safety.

To prepare:

• Review the Learning Resources focusing on strengths-based leadership.
• If you have not already done so, follow the instructions in Strengths Finder 2.0 to complete the online assessment and read the sections in Part II that are associated with your five top strengths.
• Consider the results of the assessment. What insights, questions, or concerns arise as you think about these results?
• Think about how your identified strengths relate to your current role as a leader-manager and to the professional contributions that you hope to make now and in the future. Give focused attention to patient safety and health care quality; how and why are your strengths valuable for promoting optimal patient outcomes and creating systems-level change?
• Evaluate strategies for applying your strengths in the health care workplace. Identify at least two that you can use to add value to a team or workgroup to improve quality and safety.

By Day 3

Post a brief description of your identified strengths and explain how and why they are beneficial in your role as a nurse leader-manager. Explain at least two strategies for applying your leadership strengths in a health care organization to improve quality and safety.

Resources:

Rath, T. (2007). Strengths finder 2.0. New York, NY: Gallup Press.

• Part I, “Finding Your Strengths—An Introduction” (pp. 1–31)
• Part II, “Applying Your Strengths” (pp. 33–172)
• Buckingham, M. (2011). Strong leadership. Leadership Excellence, 28(1), 5.
• Cooper, H., & Cottrell, R. R. (2010). Charting your career path through clear professional values and purpose. Health Promotion Practice, 11(1), 13–15.

4-5 pages) InstructionsYou are the chair of the Network’s ad hoc task force. Your charge is to evaluate the two alternatives and to make a recommendation on which one to accept, if revenues would be

(4-5 pages)

Instructions

You are the chair of the Network’s ad hoc task force. Your charge is to evaluate the two alternatives and to make a recommendation on which one to accept, if revenues would be identical for the two alternatives, and hence the decision can be made solely on the basis of costs. As part of the analysis, the costs of the two alternatives must be estimated on a per procedure basis and an annual basis. In addition, any relevant qualitative factors must be considered before the recommendation is made.

To keep the base case analysis manageable, the task force was instructed to assume that the operating costs remain constant over the useful life of the equipment. For comparative purposes, this assumption is not too egregious because the activities are roughly the same for both alternatives and, hence, inflation would have a somewhat neutral impact on the cost comparison.

In addition, the System CFO has asked the task force to perform some sensitivity (scenario) analyses. He is concerned about the accuracy of the cost detail inputs. Although he is confident about many of the estimates, he thinks others are more arbitrary. Those activity cost inputs considered to be most uncertain are supplies cost per unit; billing and collection cost per unit; general administration cost per unit; and transportation, setup, and breakdown cost per unit.

Thus, first, the task force must redo the analysis assuming that these inputs are higher than the base case values by 10 and 20 percent. Activity cost inputs less than the base case values could also be examined, but the critical issue here is not to underestimate the total costs involved in the two alternatives. Second, the task force must determine what would happen to the cost estimates if the useful life of the capital equipment were as short as three years or as long as seven years. Another concern was that the useful life of the equipment depended on the alternative chosen; that is, there would be less wear and tear under Alternative 1 than under Alternative 2. Finally, the task force must assess the impact of a purchase discount: Would the discount amount influence the ultimate decision?

You believe that performing a sensitivity analysis on the number of procedures would be helpful, but you realize this task would require recalculation of the per unit cost inputs, an effort thought to be too time-consuming to undertake at this point in the analysis.

NOTE: The student can make this as detailed as desired, that is, s/he can add as much financial information (spreadsheets) to match one’s comfort level with numbers and number crunching. 

Locate at least 4 contemporary, peer-reviewed articles or dissertation or thesis research studies that are qualitative in nature (e.g., case studies, historical) related to your topic of interest for

Locate at least 4 contemporary, peer-reviewed articles or dissertation or thesis research studies that are qualitative in nature (e.g., case studies, historical) related to your topic of interest for your paper and PowerPoint presentation.

Write a paper that contains the following sections:

1. Summarize the type of study and phenomenon of interest.
2. Discuss whether the sample and population used were appropriate.
3. Summarize results, limitations of results, conclusions, and applications.
4. Compare the results, conclusions, and applications among all 4 studies in a summary paragraph.

Prepare 4 PowerPoint slides that detail the most applicable results associated with each qualitative study to your topic of interest and area of application or function related to healthcare.

Paper: The student paper should address the assignment description and be a minimum of 3 full content pages, not counting the title and reference pages. The paper must be supported by a minimum of 3 references with matching citations in the body of the work.