Leadership and Management Analysis: A of Delaney Hall - Case Study Example

Leadership and Management Analysis: A Case of Delaney Hall, Background GEO Residential Reentry Center is one of the facilities offering health services to medium to high-risk offenders with an intention of reducing the recidivism rate. The facility is used to enhance effective community reintegration and rehabilitation of both post-release and in-custody persons (GEO Group, Inc., 2018). The facility has a medial department consisting of RNs, doctors, CNAs, and LPNs who work together in reviewing medical history, health status assessment and admitting residents into the facility. The medical staff determines whether an individual is well-managed in terms of mental health stability or psychiatric medication. When a resident has poor mental health state or classified as unstable, they are recommended to the inpatient behavioral health center. The current study is focused to critically assessing the facility on leadership and management aspect covering different areas of interest for the study. The current study is motivated by an interview with a Health Service Administrator (HSA) who takes an interview evaluating the performance of the facility and her path in the administration of the hospital. To attain the study objective, the study offers a description of the healthcare system by providing a clear account of size, responsibilities, mission, location, and service commitment; evaluation of her administrative position; management responsibilities; nursing care delivery; leadership style; communication strategies; and negotiation and conflict applied in the management of the facility. Purpose of the Interview The current study is aimed at evaluating critically the leadership and management aspects for GEO Residential Reentry Center. The study will evaluate the leadership and management aspects from a multi-dimensional analysis based on the findings from the interview with the Health Service Administrator at the facility. GEO Residential Reentry Center was established in promoting rehabilitative and community reintegration for both post-release an in-custody offenders. Before admission into the facility, an individual must be assessed on their mental health state. Other services offered in the facility include behavioral therapy, residential placement and medical support for the individuals. Of interest to the current study is Delaney Hall which is a sub-group of GEO that offers private detention facility situated in Newark, New Jersey (GEO Group, Inc., 2018). The facility offers services to more than 700 residents both men and women from Essex and Union County. The mission of the facility is reducing recidivism rate of offenders, which implies that this facility prevents offenders from re-offending. One of the key consideration based on HSA is the mental health, which influences the rate of recidivism. Additionally, Delaney Hall offers other services like chronic care, but the main responsibility of the facility is offering mental health needs. Overview of the Interview The interviewee was a Health Service Administrator at the Delaney Hall facility. As a passionate woman, she has long experience in service delivery first as a nursing profession as a bedside nurse. She advanced in administrative role where she has been involved in leadership and management of the facility. She services in the facility as the Health Services Administrator with a regional health services director and manager. She works together with the two in provision of optimal care. Additionally, she is in charge of the medical metrics like setting up and interviewing the specialty staff. She was responsible for all the quality improvement projects and quarterly auditing. She discusses with directors of contracted facilities on all medical issues to ensure they send residents to the facility. Administrative Position and Management Responsibilities Health Service Administrator is also responsible for budgeting of all the full time per diem staff, contract with physicians, and budget with Henry schein, credential for all employees, ensure national practitioner data bank, and licenses cprs are completed. Health Service Administrator does the reporting and budgets that are tracked using smart sheet system developed by the company. Using the share sheets, the HSA is able together with her staff and directors to track staffing plans/vacancies, daily intakes, all medical metrics and scheduling. Further, she does conference calls every week for staffing vacancies and another with health service administrators weekly. She is responsible of managing about 43 nurses, one medical secretary, two medical technologists, and five doctors. In the facility, Health Service Administrator is responsible for management responsibilities. One of the key management is role involves that of 43 nurses, five doctors, two medical technologists and one medical secretary. With these teams, she is responsible for solving issues arising in the facility to effectively ensure that equity is restored and performance is guaranteed. She is responsible of ensuring compliance to the standard procedures in the facility by working together with the employees to ensure all these requirements are fulfilled. She ensures all these standard procedures are adhered to and that the regulations including documentations are done as expected. The Health Service Administrator is also responsible for ensuring compliance with the policy on staff. The facility has an active human resource that has to be managed effectively to ensure that the workforce is highly satisfied. The smart sheet helps in the management activities where budgeting or resources allocation is critical. In this case, there is need to align financial and human resources in the facility to ensure that they is efficient operations and delivery of services. Needs of the Population The community around GEO Residential Reentry Center facility offers service to offenders consider to be high risk after reviewing their criminogenic history. Based on this occurrence, there was need to enhance community reintegration of offenders after serving their jail term or for behavioral correction when in-custody. The facility offers these services to enhance their change of behavior as a way of reducing crime by reducing criminogenic record of the offers and reducing the recidivism rate. The offenders targeted by the program comprise of those who meet certain mental health criteria to assure safety of others and themselves. A number of mental health is demanded for this population ranging from educational programs, residential placement, medical support and behavioral therapy. The facility implements a psychological care that benefit the well-being of those under their care. The medical staff in the facility are also key in provision of immediate care for acute ailments, chronic diseases management and other common ailments in the community. Nursing Care Delivery With the Health Service Administrator’s previous experience in nursing care, she has high input in enhancing effective and efficient nursing care delivery. The nursing profession is highly influenced by passion and level of empathy towards the patients in need of the services. As such, effective management of the nursing team is key in the facility. As a bedside nurse for many years, she is resourceful in policy development and human resource management of the nursing care delivery. In change implementation, the interview revealed that HSA does consultation with the nurses that she has known quite for a long time. Besides being the manager to all the 43 nurses in the facility, she has a personal relationship with them that enhances the ability to reach out to every nurse to ensure effective services are delivered. She constantly finds herself doing some counseling to the nurses on individual basis to ensure that their needs are addressed as a way of increasing performance and contribution to the facility overall nursing care services. Work engagement is a critical area in literature that is highly studied on its significance and influence on performance of nursing care delivery (Auh, Menguc, Spyropoulou & Wang, 2016). The interview revealed that the nurse leader, in this case the Health Service Administrator establishes personal relationship with all the 43 nurses in the facility as a way of enhancing effective performance. Similarly, Warshawsky, Havens and Knafl (2012) argues that interpersonal relationships between nurses and the nurse administrator is the most predictive nurse-manager work engagement. These findings mean that culture in an organisation that foster effective interpersonal relationships improves and supports the performance of nurses to offer efficient services. Further assessment by Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) work engagement offers a motivational state that is featured by dedication, vigor and absorption where nurses demonstrate ability to overcome challenges, get engrossed in their work and exhibit high mental resilience. Higher work engagement of nurses is attributed to increased willingness of nurses to communicate concerns arising in patient care and discretionary extra-role behaviour performance (Wong, Spence, & Cummings, 2010; Salanova, Lorente, Chambel, & Martínez, 2010). Leadership Input in Organisational Support One of the key area the interviewee (Health Services Administrator) has perfected in organisational support. Being a HSA working under the regional health services manager and director of health services above her, she is tasked with responsibilities that have close contact with the employees. She acts as the link between workforce and top management of the facility. As such, she does credential for all staff ensuring that all licences cprs and national practitioner data bank are completed. Even for the doctors, she is involved in offering support to ensure all their credentials are updated and licences available. She also does two conference weekly (one for staffing vacancies and the other with health service administrators in US). Besides work-related, she offers emotional support through counselling and conflict resolution in the workforce, which are key organisational support services for better performance. From the literature, organisational support involves promotion and support of workforce development, and the key areas dependent upon organisational support are culture, leadership, management and design relationships, hierarchies, teams and the structure (Varcarolis, Halter and Varcarolis, 2010). The organisational support recommendations by the Rasmussen, Henderson and Muir-Cochrane (2013) include; to increase nursing participation at a policy and health care strategy level; increase senior nursing positions to lead, support, and develop nurses, as well as allocate resources to achieve the best possible outcomes. Therefore organisational support through the provision of educational programmes in nursing management will equip nurses with the knowledge and skills required (Ennis, Happell and Reid-Searl, 2015). The study by Nolan (2012) assert that organisational support allows nurses to pursue professional development activities to become a more capable and knowledgeable workforce. Of significance is the recommendation made for the provision of organisational support in the ongoing workforce support for the nurses, underpinned by the development of a nursing culture that focuses on financial and non-financial support. Palmer, Burns and Bulman (2014) challenged organisations to support proactively and value the work of nurses to effect improved standards of nursing care, and to support the aligned initiative of scholarly leadership. The findings confirmed that a combination of scholarly approach, reflective practice, personal support, transformational leadership and supervision, which enhances the nurses in the realisation of their clinical practice to achieve full potential that is associated with improvement in the health outcomes. From the Health Services Administrator’s interviewee, a support structure framework is available and embedded on effective interpersonal relations between the administrator and workforce teams. Effective interpersonal relationship is visible when she asserts that she likes to establish personal relationships with each staff since it offers her a comfort position of talking to them regarding anything they feel. In addition, this interpersonal relationship with staff is cited by her statement that she reinforces effective communication with the workforce. As a matter of fact, these elements highlight practicing of transformational leadership style that ensure the right support and level of engagement with staff is attained to meet the needs of the facility staff (Varcarolis, Halter & Varcarolis, 2010). Leadership Skills Evident in the Facility In the study by Hogan, Przybylowicz and Vacek (2013), the managers consistently demonstrate transformational leadership behaviour that is an essential part of the health administration. The nursing research exhibit transformational leadership as helpful considering the level of workforce engagement and communication it emphasize. From the interview, the Health Service Administrator offers diverse services in support of the workforce, which is coupled by excellent interpersonal relationship with staff and effective conflict resolution mechanism. With an individual personal relationship with staff, HSA is able to promote a culture of care, equity and engagement, which influence productivity and motivation level of the workforce. The interview reveals that there is effective interaction between HSA and other workforce and further acknowledges that HSA is in good relationship with her two senior management team. High interaction and effective communication with management, nurses and doctors ensures that there is high job satisfaction, which reduces chances of burnout, unfairness and endless conflicts that are not helpful to the organisation. Transformational leadership relates to the leadership role that HSA present subsequently enhancing job satisfaction and retention rates (Negussie & Demissie, 2013). Three themes are critical to any health facility, which are training programmes, organisational support, job satisfaction and conflict resolution mechanism. As an important player in staff development, the Health Services Administrator is placed in a position that she has to do write ups and counselling of the workforce. One key aspect of management and leadership she demonstrates is being fair (Anderson, Mokracek & Lindy, 2009). Additionally, transformational leadership styles encourages high engagement of the workforce before making a decision. This is a common feature associated with HSA where she focuses on personally talking to every employee individually since she acknowledges that personal problems may hinder effective work performance. Another critical aspect associated with transformational leadership style is willingness to learn, which a culture she promotes in the facility is. She narrates of weekly meeting with other Health Services Administrators in the region, which helps in establishment of the best evidence-based practices that could improve the operations. Improvement of skills and competence level for the workforce is important in reducing infectiveness in delivery of service. The facility has more than 500 competencies that must be met as a way of ensuring that optimum care through evidence-based practices. As Drotz and Poksinska (2014) suggests, stakeholders in the offering health services are essential in enhancing effective administration of services, staff members motivation, community participation and efficient resource allocation to support the operations of the facility. This is a common practice in the facility where the HSA is tasked with the responsibility of reporting relationships and budgeting attained through a tracking system that is developed by the facility. Effective communication in the facility is another aspect of leadership that is highlighted in the company where she acts as the link between the two top management and the junior staff. Through effective interpersonal communication, she is able to communication and link with junior workforce and senior management in the implementation of policies and operations (Cullen & Gordon, 2014). Interdisciplinary teams in the hospital are under her leadership to ensure that all the relevant needs are offered. Conclusion From the analysis of the role that Health Services Administrator at Delaney Hall, it is event that management and leadership role are critical to effective performance of a health facility. On leadership, ability to communicate, solve conflict, motivate, offer organisational support and interpersonal relationship improves the operations of a facility by promoting a harmonious environment that offer a conducive environment. Despite offering leadership, guidance is also key combined with mutual respect and communication. On management, HSA demonstrates ability to organize the staff, structure operations, streamline activities and effective allocate resources (both financial and human resources). These aspects of leadership and management are clearly identified from the interview and their contribution matched with evidence from the literature. References Anderson, J. J., Mokracek, M., & Lindy, C. N. (2009). A Nursing Quality Program Driven by Evidence-Based Practice. Nursing Clinics of North America, 44(1), 83-91. Doi:10.1016/j.cnur.2008.10.012 Auh, S., Menguc, B., Spyropoulou, S., & Wang, F. (2016). Service employee burnout and engagement: the moderating role of power distance orientation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(6), 726-745. Cullen, C. B., & Gordon, P. A. (2014). 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