nd

lecture

The Nature of Work

The nature of work in health care today presents
many opportunities for mid-level managers to
hone effective people management and
communication skills.
There are fewer people who are the traditional
full-time employees dedicated to an organization
for their entire careers.

Workforce Diversity
Organizations may direct much attention to the
need for cultural competency to meet the needs
of diverse groups of people, very little is known
about the actual effect of a diverse staff on the
outputs of health-care organizations.
In fact, there is actually some controversy about
its value.

Racial Diversity
The potential for others to perceive managers as
playing favorites with staff who are of the same
racial or ethnic group may become an issue if job
descriptions, performance criteria, and other
decisions are not communicated clearly and
consistently to everyone.
The more diverse the work group, the more
important it becomes to demonstrate actions and
decisions that provoke reactions of fairness and
trust.

Generation Gaps
Managers need to determine the potential
value of the recognition of generational
differences and their effects on work in health
care. Identification of ways to build on the
strengths of each group may be the key to
reducing another source of potential conflict
among coworkers.

Financial Issues for Mid-Level Managers

A potential misconception about mid-level
managers is that they need a master of business
administration (MBA) to function effectively
because of their financial responsibilities. It is
more likely that their financial responsibilities are
limited to completion of reports and requests
during the organizations budgeting process.
Perhaps more importantly, mid-level managers
are expected to track and understand income and
expenses for their units.

Implementation of Plans
The other skill that mid-level managers are held
accountable for is the implementation of the many
Sub-decisions that are generated by the plans laid
out by executives in upper management. The major
reason that these broad plans fail to be
implemented is because the implementers are not
adequately supervised in the sequence of tasks that
must be completed to achieve an outcome.
Organizing these tasks in health care falls to midlevel
managers. After clarifying and sequencing the tasks,
managers need to guide the implementation
process.

Managers and patients

Main goal of any manager is to gain satisfaction
of the community he serves trough planning
and supervision of these plans.
Patient Practitioner - Manager Cycle.
Any small change in the manager-practitioner
relationship may have a huge influence on the
employees relationship with a patient.

Manager
Unfair and
unjustly

Practitioner
Poor
performance
Patient
dissatisfaction

Health-Care organizations and physical

therapy
Why physical therapist accept managerial position?
1. high starting salaries.
2. Good relation with upper level of administrators.
3. perfect location.
4. interesting job assignments.

Organizational Culture
Culture is defined for this purpose as the shared
attitudes, experiences, beliefs, and values of a
group.
The culture drives all aspects of a health-care
organizations decisions about its operations and
its relationships to its external stakeholders.

Intercultural Communication in Organizations

Three level of interaction will be included in this
model:
Level 1 interactions in this model are based on the
broad foundation of information collected about a
culture, values, beliefs, norms, etc.
Level 1 interactions are about health-care culture
with its common values and norms that generally
are related to helping people who are sick or
injured.

 Level 2 interactions are influenced by information about

social groups or roles within the culture. This includes the
categorizing of people by job title, gender, or age.
Level 2 interactions may reveal stereotypes that can be
found regarding sub-groups such as physicians, nurses
aides, physical therapists, or patients from particular
communities or ethnic groups.
People in health-care organizations rely on this culture
and subculture information in most of their interactions
as they cope with a great deal of complex information
particularly when interactions with others are shorttermso that they can predict behavior and their
responses to those behaviors.

 Level 3 interactions are based on personal information about

individuals in the Level 2 social sub-groups. This information
determines how much an individual meets the stereotypes of a
social sub-group within the expectations of the whole
organization culture that they are part of.
Level 3 interactions, becomes more important in establishing
strong patient-provider relationships in health-care
organizations when relationships are long term, so knowledge
about individual person become very important issue.

 Health-care managers may need to provide

opportunities to ensure that the norms and values of
the organization are accepted by staff and that they
understand the norms and values of the communities
they serve.
They also must encourage their staffs toward behaviors
that reflect an understanding of the groups of people
they commonly care for while identifying the differences
and specific needs of individuals in those groups.
Gathering information about result from assumptions
drawn about the importance of cultural and social
influences on a particular person.

In-Group and Out-Group

In larger organizations, there may be several subgroups
(subcultures) that are influenced by the unique nature of
their work and the roles of the members in it.
In some cases, physical therapists as a whole may be an ingroup. In other cases, there may be in-groups and outgroups of physical therapists in one organizations subculture
of physical therapy. Physical therapists who work in the
outpatient center of a hospital may consider the therapists
who work in the inpatient units as an out-group. They may
be reluctant to work in the other setting and minimally
interact with each other. The outpatient team may be very
willing to assist each other with patient loads demands
because of their commitment to each other and patient
outcomes.