Role of professional nursing organizations in maintaining a healthy workplace - Research Paper Example

The research “Role of professional nursing organizations in maintaining a healthy workplace” investigates the professional work of healthcare workers in ensuring healthy workplaces. In the healthcare setting, the main players are hospital administrators, doctors, nurses and patients. Nurses play a particularly important role in the provision of healthcare services to patients the other stakeholders not necessarily playing a lesser role in this respect. One of the main concerns of nurses in the course of fulfilling their duties is maintaining a healthy working environment.

Indeed a healthy environment plays a key role in ensuring that health workers, doctors, patients and other people visiting the hospital face less risk of getting infected with diseases that they previously did not have. At this point, however, it must be noted that maintaining a healthy working environment is not limited to a clean environment. Instead, a healthy working environment (HWE) encompasses a whole set of factors including skillful communication and accountability as noted by Medscape.

Indeed according to AACN, a healthy environment means an atmosphere that is “productive, able to give quality care, satisfying, and able to meet personal needs”. In fact, maintaining a healthy environment also helps in ensuring positive patient-staff outcomes according to Laschinger and Leiter. On the contrary, an unhealthy environment negatively impacts on nurses’ willingness to continue offering services in the workplace and patient safety Medscape. (2001). Apart from hospital staff, professional nursing organizations play an enormous role in the maintenance of a healthy work environment.

This paper will focus on the role played by professional nursing organizations in the maintenance of such environments. Strategies used by Professional Nursing Organizations to Foster Healthy Work Environments The safe care of people who are sick is positively correlated with the quality of the work environment that nurses encounter (Alspach, 2009). Furthermore, HWEs are practically linked to the retention and satisfaction of patients, reduced job stress among healthcare workers, increased job satisfaction as well as heightened attraction (Kramer & Schmalenberg, 2008).

There are numerous professional organizations that have established strategies to ensure that the healthcare environment remains a healthy workplace. Some of these organizations include the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Hospitals, Institute of Medicine, American Nurses’ Credentialing Center, Nursing Organizations Alliance, American Association of Colleges of Nursing, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), and American Organization of Nurse Executives (Kramer & Schmalenberg, 2008).

In ensuring healthy workplaces become a reality, these organizations commonly focus on instituting systems, policies, structures and programs that reflect the domain and point of view of nurses in executive as well as leadership roles (Kramer & Schmalenberg, 2008). Training programs for example may be established so as to equip nurses with skills that will help them be at the forefront of establishing a healthy work environment. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (2005) states that the ingredients for achieving a healthy work environment successfully are effective decision making, true collaboration, proper staffing, good communication, authentic leadership, and meaningful recognition.

The organization has developed standards to help hospital and other healthcare centers achieve healthy work environment standards. The standards developed by the organization focus on quality improvement, evidence based practice as well as informatics (AACN, 2011). Instead of providing exhaustive dimensions of nursing practice that already are addressed by regulations and professional agencies, the standards are presented as a basis for engaged dialogue and thoughtful reflection about the work environment.

Skilled communication as a strategy for creating a healthy work environment involves two way communication in which individuals