Critical Decision Making In Healthcare

Running head: Critical Decision Making In Healthcare
CRITICAL DECISION MAKING IN HEALTHCARE

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Critical Decision Making In Healthcare
Critical decision making is one of the highly needed capabilities that help employees to
maintain a risk free and harmonized atmosphere in the organizational situations. This capability
is more relevant for the healthcare professionals or each and every employee who work in
healthcare organizations. This is so because many patients and their family members, friends
come and stay at those organizations with the expectation of being in a hygienic and safe
environment (Thompson, Aitken, Doran & Dowding, 2013). Thus, this study focuses on a
critical analysis of a given scenario in order to investigate the impact of not exercising critical
decision making skill in a healthcare organization. Some recommendations have also been given
as a manager so that negative impacts of lack of critical decision making skills can be minimized
in the future.
The given scenario is based upon the story of Mike, a lab technician in a hospital.
According to the scenario narrative, Mike is a late comer who comes at the hospital after the
scheduled time for one reason or another. However, he is the only earning member of his family
and has to keep his job in any way. Mike tries hard not to get late and also promised his
supervisor that he would not be late in order to avoid the risk of his termination (Allied Health
Community, 2019). Unfortunately, he failed to keep his promise and ends up reaching the
hospital late. In his way to his working area, he noticed a spill spreading all over the floor.
However, cleaning the spill is not part of his job because he is a lab technician and not in the
department of cleaning. Now, Mike is in dilemma whether to do something that can solve the
problem or to ignore the fact that he saw such as an issue. He is confused because doing
something for solving the issue can consume some additional time and he can get late again. The
dilemma refers to e perfect situation when critical decision making skill is needed.
There were two possible choices in front of him that includes reporting the issue to the
concerned department or ignoring the situation and moving on. According to the scenario,
certain things happened after he ignored the issue. A person fell on the lobby exactly where the
spill was there because of getting slipped. As a result, that person has been admitted to the same
hospital with having sever pain and a probably a broken hip. In addition, the patient seems to be
very much angry with the fact that the hospital does not have safety programs to avoid such

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Critical Decision Making In Healthcare
situations. The patient is more disappointed because it is a hospital and patient safety should fall
under one of the essential legal and ethical considerations of hospital authorities.
There can be various negative impacts of his decision of not reporting the issue of
noticing spill on the lobby to any other department members. As seen in the scenario, a person
fell over that spill so it can be said that his decision came with a serious ignorance about patient
safety (Spatz, Krumholz & Moulton, 2016). Healthcare institutions, unlike other places, need to
be the safest place to be because patients come here to be healed. Thus, little to major careless
behavior can harm the entire organizational quality too. It takes time for an organization to gain
its popularity of providing quality services but a single bad quality service can change the
equation all together (Mosadeghrad, 2014). On the other hand, there are some legal obligations
that every organization needs to follow in order to avoid litigation risks. Any affected person can
take a legal action if the healthcare organization does not give heed to its management needs.
Cleaning spill on the floor falls under the category of the least expectations of the people
who are either a patient or visit the hospital for some reasons. However, the main concern of any
healthcare institution should be focused on patient’s safety not only to maintain the
organizational quality but also to avoid legal interference (Elarabi & Johari, 2014). Apart from
these, Mike’s decision increased the workload of other healthcare professionals too because now
they have to treat another patient with major injury. The patient can take legal action or complain
the hospital management team or she can just ask the hospital to treat her free if cost because it
was the responsibility of the hospital to avoid situations like this from happening.
In this regard, one thing needs to be understood that Mike can show this kind of careless
behavior not only while considering his fundamental functions in the hospital but also when he
works as a lab technician. Thus, as a manager, I will first consult with him and ask him why he
did not report the problem to anyone and not even after knowing about the patient’s fall. I will
ask this in order to investigate whether Mike is going through any kind of burnout syndrome or
because of any serious pressure (Moss et al. 2016). After hearing his justification, I will suggest
him to understand the responsibility he bears for working in a healthcare institution. Like any
other institution, his actions represents the whole organization and thus the whole organization
can be sued because if the mistakes he made. Then, I will ensure him that he will not lose his job