Effective and Ethical Decision-Making in Healthcare Leadership- Prioritizing Patients, Employees, and Stakeholders

Effective and Ethical Decision-Making in Healthcare Leadership- Prioritizing Patients, Employees, and Stakeholders

Any healthcare organization’s success depends on its ability to optimize care provision processes towards safe and effective care. This, however, is dependent on the individual input of members of these healthcare organizations. Overall success is only attainable when each component of these systems is effective in their clinical decision-making processes. This also requires a collaboration between the healthcare provider leaders and their subjects in key healthcare operationalizations that contribute to caring optimization. Care leaders are often tasked with identifying and understanding the routine difficulties that present within the healthcare systems and directing their subjects towards the resolution of these difficulties. In this regard, they should always exhibit marked situational awareness and huge problem troubleshooting capabilities for them to attain excellence by exploring the aspects that help these leaders make effective and ethical decisions.

These aspects include sound decision-making, which maintains key significance in the optimization of healthcare. Healthcare outcomes are often probabilistic, with a majority of the clinical decisions made with varying degrees of uncertainty (Nibbelink & Brewer, 2018). This underpins the need for sound and informed decision-making in clinical settings, as the outcomes are dependent on these decisions. Whereas evidence-based guidelines and technological tools that aid in clinical decision-making have been developed, clinicians’ decisions toward care plans still maintain the central role. 

Sound decision-making ensures better clinical outcomes. Sound decision-making entails the utilization of evidence-based knowledge in the selection of patient care plans that produce better outcomes. Sound decision-making not only involves the caregivers but also draws input from the individual patients as well as their families (Nibbelink & Brewer, 2018). Sound decision-making also involves the ability to include other healthcare providers within the healthcare team in the establishment of an effective care plan. Furthermore, it also enables the sharing of health knowledge as well as the flow of health information from the patients to all the providers required to optimize the care process. Additionally, the patient is empowered to inform clinical decisions that they feel are right for them. The overall benefit of a proper decision-making process is evident in better patient outcomes as well as the overall satisfaction of the healthcare team.

Poor clinical decisions may sometimes be detrimental to the patients as well as the caregivers. Poor or uninformed clinical decision-making has been implicated in poor clinical outcomes, as evident in mortality related to healthcare provision processes or procedures. Increased morbidity has also been implicated. This may be attributable to wrong treatment procedures, improper therapeutic approaches, adverse drug reactions resulting from provider-associated errors, and poor disease prognosis associated with improper care plans, among others. The patient often feels the overall effects, whose incarcerations are attributable to factors other than themselves and their families and communities that have to share the health financial burden resulting from longer hospital stays.

All clinical decisions should be evidence-based. Evidence-based decision-making entails the utilization of current research or experimental evidence and an approved knowledge base in establishing frameworks utilizable in informing a practice or a policy-making process (Porzsolt, 2016). Evidence-based decision-making requires that the person involved in the decision-making role screens for the most current knowledge base that is specific to the field and then integrates this knowledge with their intrinsic expertise to give a specific direction. Evidence-based decision-making eliminates an element of chance by ensuring that decisions made are compatible or in concert with previously documented findings on the applicability of a given intervention.

 Evidence-based clinical or medical decision-making utilizes this experimental evidence or research work to inform a patient’s care plan. Healthcare is a critical field that involves human lives. It is, therefore, necessary that healthcare providers make decisions that ensure the safety of these patients and not those that may bring harm to the patients. Evidence-based knowledge reduces the probabilistic nature of healthcare interventions by ensuring that clinical decisions are selected from a wider array that will resolve the presenting patient problem while maintaining the overall safety of the patients. Evidence-based decision-making also eliminates the trial and error of clinical interventions that may, in turn, prolong hospital stays and thereby produce a heavier financial burden to the patients and their families. A clinically sound decision often ensures better patient outcomes.

Data-driven decision-making utilizes documented facts, data, or metrics to inform strategic organizational decisions that are in concert with their goals and initiatives. Utilization of data in the decision-making process requires an initial understanding of the nature and operationalizations of an organization. This will enable the identification of the areas within the organization that could be impacted by this data. This should be followed by a keen analysis of the available data and the identification of the available gaps to establish the areas that require addressing (Ugarte, 2021). A conclusion should then be drawn from this analysis upon which the organization will tailor its machinery, including its employees, towards the integration of this data in addressing the identified gaps.

Various types of data are utilizable in the decision-making processes. The major types of data are quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data defines data that can be quantified in numeric variables. Quantitative data can either be continuous or discrete and often utilized to represent elements that can be given value by numeric representations such as weight and temperature, among others. On the other hand, qualitative data are utilized in data that cannot be quantified but can be expressed by numbers. These include data such as ethnicity, among others. Qualitative data can either be nominal or ordinal. All these types of data have been found to be useful within healthcare organizations.

The utilization of data in healthcare decision-making processes is key. Data not only gives perspective to health information being communicated but also enables a better understanding of the various presenting cases. Data enhances clinical efficiency by providing the needed patient information to providers, thus enabling them to make specific clinical decisions tailored to the specific patient. Data also improve the safety and quality of the care processes by readily availing patient information with consequential elimination of downtime time that would have been utilized to identify patient’s problems. Errors are also reduced considerably due to the availability of data within the care provision system. All these reasons underpin the significance of data in the healthcare provision system.

As much as the intrinsic decision-making ability of healthcare provider leaders is necessary for directing organizational operations, regulatory and organizational guidelines also influence how they make their decisions. Most healthcare organizations possess specific goals and objectives. These goals shape their operability and define the various steps that are utilized to attain these goals. Organizational structures are often tailored towards the achievement of organizational goals. Leaders in this regard act as micromanagers who whip the subjects toward the attainment of these organizational goals (Scholl et al., 2018). Leaders are, therefore, expected to work in concert with the organizational requirements to further this course.

Regulatory or organizational guidelines define the framework to which leaders operate. These guidelines highlight the responsibilities of each member of the organization. The leaders are expected to ensure that every member of the organization does whatever they are required to do. They also ensure that each member does not veer off the main course prescribed by the organizational frameworks. These frameworks thus shape the decision-making process of every leader, tailoring them to make decisions that are favorable to the organizational frameworks established by the organization.

Ethical decision-making in the healthcare provision system is fundamental. The preserve of an effective care delivery process is dependent on the utilization of ethical attributes in handling fellow providers as well as in patient handling. Ethical decision-making will promote respect and trust between the providers and the patients and ensure fairness, safety, and caring for the patients (Magrizos & Roumpi, 2020). Ethical attributes of beneficence, non-maleficence, respect, and justice are essential in the decision-making processes.

To promote ethical decision-making, all leaders should maintain ethical behavior. They should also be active participators in ethical programs or programs advocating for moral ethics within the organization. As leaders, they could additionally organize programs such as ethical training to enable each member to understand the importance of ethics in organizational operations. Moreover, all leaders should address ethical issues arising within the organization promptly and also be ready to enforce punitive measures against ethical violators (Magrizos & Roumpi, 2020). The significance of these steps is to showcase the importance of ethical behavior within the organization as well as discourage any form of unethical behavior.

In case of any ethical conflicts, leaders should be ready to address them. The initial step is often to identify the specific ethical issue. This is then followed by the identification and evaluation of the alternative course of action. Subsequently, the leader should then decide on the appropriate course of action. This decision should be free from bias and any emotional attachment. Usually, the decision may be to take punitive measures against one or all the affected parties or withhold any punishment. This varies with the nature of the ethical conflict. 

Decision-making remains to be an important aspect of organizational operations. In healthcare organizations, decision-making enables the provision of safe and effective care. The decision-making should, however, be evidence-based and data-driven to ensure a safe and effective care process. Although leaders are important in the decision-making process, the organizational frameworks often shape them toward making decisions favorable to the organizational goals. The decision-making process should be ethical.

References

Magrizos, S., & Roumpi, D. (2020). Doing the right thing or doing things right? The role of ethics of care and ethics of justice in human resource management of social enterprises. Strategic Change, 29(4), 485-496. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2359

Nibbelink, C., & Brewer, B. (2018). Decision-making in nursing practice: An integrative literature review. Journal Of Clinical Nursing, 27(5-6), 917-928. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14151

Porzsolt, F. (2016). Evidence-based decision making–the six-step approach. Evidence-Based Medicine, 8(6), 165-166. https://doi.org/10.1136/ebm.8.6.165

Scholl, I., LaRussa, A., Hahlweg, P., Kobrin, S., & Elwyn, G. (2018). Organizational- and system-level characteristics that influence the implementation of shared decision-making and strategies to address them — a scoping review. Implementation Science, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-018-0731-z

Ugarte, R. (2021). 4-Step Framework for Data-Driven Decision-Making With Case Studies. Ruben Ugarte. Retrieved 4 November 2021, from https://rubenugarte.com/data-driven-decision-making/.

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Decision-making is a constant process for those in leadership roles. An effective leader must be able to understand the daily problems that arise and present solutions beneficial to the organization, employees, and associated community or stakeholders. In a healthcare organization, this includes patients and their families. In a 1,000-1,250-word paper, discuss the aspects that help leaders make effective and ethical decisions in health care.

Effective and Ethical Decision-Making in Healthcare Leadership- Prioritizing Patients, Employees, and Stakeholders

Discuss the importance of sound decision-making in health care. Describe the potential consequences of poor or uniform decision-making as a leader.
Define evidence-based decision-making. Explain how this is applied in health care and why it is important.
Explain the term data-driven decision-making. Discuss what types of data are used for making decisions in health care and why it is important for a leader to use data when making a decision.
Discuss how regulatory or organizational guidelines help shape leaders’ decisions in health care.
Describe the role of ethics in decision-making. Explain steps a leader can take to promote ethical decision-making. How can a leader address ethical conflicts that arise during the decision-making process?
A minimum of three academic references from credible sources are required for this assignment.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines in the APA Style Guide in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

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