Incivility refers to a milder form of uncivil behavior conducted with the aim of harming the target. All forms of incivility entail dysfunctional interpersonal relationships attributed to high employee turnover and low quality of care (Kisner et al., 2018). Nurses have a responsibility to establish and promote healthy interpersonal relationships with one another. They need to know how their communication and behavior or failure to act can cause incivility (Abdollahzadeh et al., 2017). This essay will analyze the results from the Work Environment Assessment, review literature on incivility, and explore evidence-based strategies to create high-performance interprofessional teams.
Leaders should engage in patient and employee advocacy. Advocacy for staff has a favorable influence on the overall quality of care that patients get at a facility. For example, the participation of workers in decision-making, particularly on issues that directly impact them, such as flexible work hours, stimulates employees to work with a purpose for the benefit of the whole workforce. Employees are more motivated to work for the organization when they are campaigning for a bigger pay raise and a more favorable working environment (Rosa et al., 2020). Being motivated to work means that health care practitioners will adopt evidence-based best practices, which are crucial in providing high-quality health care services.
The Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory gave my workplace a score of 67/100. As a result, the workplace environment appears to be barely healthy (Clark, 2015). This was an unexpected result, as I expected to score in the moderately healthy range. I was surprised that we only received 5 points for four of the items. It is somewhat surprising that our organization only received the maximum points in four items, indicating that we have a long way to go in promoting a healthier workplace. The four items are as follows: encouraging teamwork and collaboration, treating employees fairly and respectfully, employing effective conflict resolution skills, and offering competitive salaries, benefits, compensation, and other rewards.
I was also surprised that my workplace received one point on two Clark Inventory items. This was surprising because our organization is of such high caliber that it should not have such low scores on issues related to healthy workplaces. The two lowest-scoring items were: the workload being reasonable, manageable, and fairly distributed, and the organization attracting and retaining the best and brightest.
Prior to completing the Clark Inventory, I assumed that an unreasonable and unmanageable workload was the primary cause of the organization’s inability to retain its best employees. I believed that unbearable nursing workloads and nurse shortages are linked, with one leading to the other. This was confirmed by the assessment, in which I determined that the primary reason for failing to retain staff is the high, unmanageable nursing workload in our workplace.
The assessment results indicate a stressful work environment that can be attributed to an unreasonable, unmanageable, and unfairly distributed workload. A Barely Healthy workplace suggests a problem with the organization’s leadership; in that, the leaders are more goal-oriented than people-oriented. This results in the management focusing more on meeting its clients’ needs at the expense of the staff needs (Abdollahzadeh et al., 2017). The results also mean that the staff’s needs may be overlooked, and their voice is not often considered during policy-making. Furthermore, they suggest that the staff may not be adequately engaged in making decisions that affect them, and the leadership does not recognize shared governance.