Assignment: Formal & Informal Power in Healthcare

Assignment: Formal & Informal Power in Healthcare

Assignment: Formal & Informal Power in Healthcare

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Question Description
I don’t understand this Nursing question and need help to study.

Using the case scenario provided, write a 3–4 page analysis of the organization’s political landscape, including formal and informal power structures at play and their impact on culture, policy, and communications.

Understanding the political landscape of an organization is key when developing strategic priorities. Knowing the key players and how to leverage relationships will help you develop a strategic plan that is meaningful to all stakeholders. Gaining stakeholder buy-in is the key to success when attempting to meet the strategic goals outlined on a balanced scorecard.

This assessment provides an opportunity for you to gain insight into organizational power structures and their effects on organizational culture, policies, and communications.

DEMONSTRATION OF PROFICIENCY
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

Competency 2: Analyze formal and informal power structures in an organization.
Analyze the formal and informal lines of power within an organization.
Incorporate organizational power dynamics as a factor in executive-level decision making.
Identify the appropriate source of power for achieving a primary strategic objective.
Competency 4: Recommend policy changes that support a strategic plan.
Assess the potential impact or influence of power on organizational policy.
Competency 5: Address assessment purpose in effective written or multimedia presentations, incorporating appropriate evidence and communicating in a form and style consistent with applicable professional and academic standards.
Articulate meaning relevant to the main topic, scope, and purpose of the prompt.
Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references.
PREPARATION
For this assessment, use the following case scenario:

You are a new nurse executive at a community-based hospital system in the southeastern region of the United States. The system is not-for-profit and serves five rural counties. The system comprises one flagship hospital, three smaller critical access hospitals, and a number of clinics and urgent care centers. The health care system serves a diverse population of insured, Medicare, Medicaid, and uninsured patients. The hospital is Joint Commission accredited and for three years in a row has been rated as a Top 100 Hospital.

Historically, the hospital system has been physician-centric, meaning that the physician staff have had the power to influence change, policy, and protocol. The current chief executive officer (CEO) was recently hired from a large university-affiliated hospital system. The chief medical officer (CMO) started the organization’s orthopedic program (one of the most lucrative service lines) and has been with the organization for more than 25 years. He is well respected in the local community and serves on a number of community boards. In light of this strong influence from the department of medicine, nursing has struggled over the past five years. You are the second chief nursing officer (CNO) in four years. The hospital board is applying pressure to seek Magnet designation, which was recently lost due to poor leadership by your predecessor.

The hospital has recently adopted the hospitalist model to cover all in-patients. The hospitalist group was developed by physician leaders in the organization and operates as a separate department within the organization. The hospitalist group desires to become a limited liability corporation (LLC) to maximize benefit offerings but needs a larger staff to make this happen. They have presented a proposal to executive leadership to transfer all advance practice registered nurses (APRNs) working in the organization (there are more than 50) to the hospitalist group, which is housed under the department of medicine. The CMO is spearheading this initiative. Traditionally, ARPNs were hired and managed by the department of nursing.

As the new CNO, you have been approached by a group of 15 APRNs who are against the transition as it will severely impact their scope of practice, in addition to affecting their paid time off, salary, and work hours. The CMO has offered to make APRNs eligible for the annual physician hospitalist bonus structure, as an incentive. At the same time, the CMO has informally proposed that a new policy be created for APRN hospital privileges. If the APRNs choose not to join the hospitalist group, they will not be eligible for hospital privileges. In the state in which the organization is located, a supervising physician is required for APRN practice.

INSTRUCTIONS
Analyze the organization’s political landscape. Examine formal and informal power structures at play and how they affect organizational culture, policies, and communications at all levels.

Lessons learned from your analysis of the organization’s political landscape will provide useful insight into important contextual factors for consideration as you work through Assessments 2, 3, and 4.

Note: Remember that you can submit all or a portion of your draft analysis to Smarthinking for feedback, before you submit the final version for this assessment. If you plan on using this free service, be mindful of the turnaround time of 24–48 hours for receiving feedback.

Analysis Format and Length
Format your document using APA style.

Use the APA Style Paper Template [DOCX]. An APA Style Paper Tutorial [DOCX] is also provided to help you in writing and formatting your analysis. Be sure to include:
A title page and references page. An abstract is not required.
A running head on all pages.
Use the following section headings to ensure thorough content coverage and flow.
Formal and Informal Lines of Power.
Organizational Power Influences on Executive-Level Decision-Making.
The Impact of Power on Organizational Policy.
Sources of Power.
Provide a short conclusion to your analysis in the form of a summary or editorial.
Your analysis should be 3–4 pages in length, excluding the title and references pages.
Evaluation
The following tasks correspond to the grading criteria in the assessment scoring guide, so be sure to address each point. Read the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.

Analyze the formal and informal lines of power within the organization.
What source of power is being used by the different stakeholders? For example: authority, rewards, coercion, expertise, reputation, personal power.
Describe the effects of power structures on organizational culture, policies, and communications at all levels.
Incorporate organizational power dynamics as a factor in executive-level decision making.
Based on your analysis of internal power structures and your perspective as CNO, what would be the best way to respond to the concerns of the ARPNs in this scenario, and why?
What support for your response can be found in the evidence-based literature?
What underlying assumptions might influence your decision making?
Assess the potential impact or influence of power on organizational policy.
What is the basis for your conclusions?
Identify the appropriate source of power for achieving a primary strategic objective.
For example: authority, rewards, coercion, expertise, reputation, personal power.
What evidence do you have to support your conclusion?
Articulate meaning relevant to the main topic, scope, and purpose of the prompt.
Write with a specific purpose and audience in mind.
Adhere to scholarly and disciplinary writing standards.
Proofread your writing to minimize errors that could distract readers and make it more difficult for them to focus on the substance of your analysis.
Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.