Organizational culture has a significant impact on increasing productivity, quality of care,
staff retention, and job satisfaction. Nurses, including me, always prefer to work in a positive
work environment, where we get equal opportunities and respect. It is impossible or difficult to
work in a culture that drags us down. Whenever there is a change in work culture, it could be
either beneficial or harmful to the organization and employees (Gaudine & Lamb, 2015).
I experienced different organizational cultures in my workplaces, such as safety culture,
the culture of accountability, bullying culture, etc. When I started my career, I have witnessed
senior nurses bullying some novice nurses, but I was so powerless to report or react to such
incidents, mainly due to fear of consequences. Most of the nurses were tolerate bullying, and
some others dropped out their career forever. In a negative organizational culture, the so -cold
queen bully might rule the roost and set the tone for everyone (Carlson, 2017). Such toxic culture
creates a dangerous and unhealthy workplace.
From my own experience, I could tell how much influence a positive work culture can
have on a person's confidence level. I have worked in different hospital settings. As like
everyone, I was also overwhelmed with stress and anxiety in my first weeks my new job.
However, my colleagues greeted me with a smile on their faces and offered tremendous support,
which quickly helped me adapt to the new working environment. Researches have proved that a
happy work culture improves social relationships, quality of care and thereby improve the patient
outcome (Seppala & Cameron, 2017).
Physical injuries related to falls were very frequent in my workplace. Nursing and
hospital management were very concerned about the issue and decided to create a safety culture
to ensure patient safety and improve the quality of care. After evaluating the existing fall
prevention protocols such as low-level beds, risk assessment, and bed alarm, new interventions
were planned. Initially, a panel of nurses assessed the nurse's responses and understanding
regarding this matter and sought our opinions. After having open communication between the
health care professionals, the panel focused on providing individual fall prevention patient
education. For this Safe Recovery Program was planned and implemented. Personalized
information and follow up was provided for older and eligible individuals. There was a
significant reduction in the number of falls after the implementation of new strategies. Although
the new change increased accountability and workload, nurses in various units responded very
positively to the new organizational culture, which improved patient safety, satisfaction, and
outcome. Further discussions were conducted to seek effectiveness, suggestions and identify
barriers. Overall, the new organizational cultural change was very positive and was beneficial to
both patients and the entire health team.
The organizational work culture directly affects the quality of nursing care (Gaudine &
Lamb, 2015). Changing a culture is not easy; it needs strong leadership, open communication,
and teamwork.
References
Carlson, K. (2017). Nursing Workplace Culture: Change Begins With You. [Link].
[Link]
Gaudine, A., & Lamb, M. (2015). Nursing leadership and Management: working with Canadian
healthcare organizations (1st ed.). Pearson.
Seppala, E., & Cameron, K. (2017, May 8). Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More
Productive. Harvard Business Review. [Link]
cultures-are-more-productive
