Professional Development Plan: Healthcare Manager's Perspective

This report presents a comprehensive professional development plan designed for a hospital manager. It begins with an introduction to career development planning, emphasizing the importance of defining long-term and short-term goals. The plan includes a self-assessment, identifying strengths (decision-making, reliability, relationship building, motivating ability) and weaknesses (lack of experience, emotional instability), along with opportunities (improved management, better services, better human resources) and threats (competition, resource availability, coordination) through a SWOT analysis. Long-term goals (hospital growth, competitive advantage, enhanced services, senior manager position) and short-term goals (equipment, medicine availability, human resources, training, environment, allocation, coordination, IT system, policies, staff motivation) are established. The plan outlines specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (SMART) goals. It details the actions taken to achieve the goals, including resource assessment, policy updates, financial allocation, staff scheduling, coordination, treatment quality, talent development, hiring, teamwork management, technology innovation, healthcare improvement, problem-solving, and redefining employee roles. The report concludes with a discussion of plan evaluation and the importance of reflection, which is crucial for continuous improvement. The report emphasizes the need for coordination among stakeholders, the significance of human resources, and the role of technology in providing better patient care.

Running Head: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN 0
Professional Development Plan
(student name)
11-28-2018

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN 1
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Reflection.........................................................................................................................................3
SWOT analysis............................................................................................................................3
Long-term goals...........................................................................................................................6
Short term goals...........................................................................................................................6
S.M.A.R.T Goals.........................................................................................................................7
The action was taken to achieve the goals...................................................................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................12
Appendix........................................................................................................................................14
SWOT Table..............................................................................................................................14

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN 2
Introduction
A career development plan is defining the long-term and short-term goals for yourself, pertaining
to the existing job, and future opportunities. It consists of a planned structure to achieve those
goals and those goals set must be clear, concise, valid, reliable, and achievable. The purpose of
the reflective career development plan is to analyze your own strength, weakness, opportunities,
and threats, while using your strength to gain opportunity and avoid threats (Rothwell & Jones,
2015).
A manager is an important human resource in any industry. For this, the healthcare industry will
be considered, that is the role of the manager in the hospital will be discussed. A career
development of a manager of the hospital will be included in the reflection. The steps involved in
creating a professional development plan, that we will reflect further are, self-assessment; setting
long-term, short-term, and S.M.A.R.T goals; deciding on action taken to accomplish goals;
evaluation of plan; reflecting often, and last is portfolio creation of the accomplishments
(Zepeda, 2013).

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Reflection
Being a manager at the hospital, there are many roles to fulfill. The major goal was the growth of
the hospital, for which I decided to construct a personal professional development plan. I was
able to recognize the motivation for planning while working with doctors, staff, and nurses. For
instance, the planning includes the action taken for “client-centered or client satisfaction,”
because it is the client, for which a health care center is running. For collaboration of efforts of
doctors, nurses, staff, and resources, a manager needs to accompany an appropriate role for the
success of a hospital ( Ipsen & Nielsen, 2017).
To initiate with the professional development plan, it is essential to evaluate my own strength
and weakness, the first step was “Self-assessment (Megginson, 2017).” While evaluating, I
observe my existing skills and strengths includes decision-making, effective communication,
interpersonal skills, and appropriate recruiting. I do observe my weakness as well; it includes the
in-depth knowledge of the business that is lack of knowledge of medicine. After assessing
myself, the next step I did in my professional development plan, was to define my S.M.A.R.T
goals, long-term goals, and short-term goals
SWOT analysis
The initial step for the plan included identification of own strength, weakness, opportunity, and
treats.
Strength
 Decision-making – the quick and appropriate decision-making ability is one of the
strength, which I observe for myself. It is and helpful strength for manager post

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 Reliability – being one of the reliable people, for hospital and for the patients. The
reliability is essential for performing any task in a work environment, or anywhere in
personal life as well
 Relationship building – I believe that I am really good in making relations with people, or
group of people, which turned out to be as a strength while working as a manager and
contacting with various group of people to manage things
 Motivating ability – I am a self-motivated person and have the ability to keep others
motivated. This is helpful in managing teams and different stakeholders of hospital
Weakness
 Lack of experiences – I do not have much experience, like experience to work with an
international firm, or doing business internationally. Such a lack of experience can cause
a delay in decision making or can act as a barrier to the organizational growth
 Emotional instability – in my opinion, one of the weakness observed is the instability of
emotions in myself. The emotions play an important role for an individual, but some
people are able to control their emotions and have a balance with their emotions, and
some just cannot. I believe that I am an individual, who is not able to control their
emotions much, which may lead to poor work-life balance. I always need to work upon
this weakness to keep a balance.
Opportunities
 Improved management – the opportunity for being a manager is to improve the
management of the hospital, to provide a direction for growth. The management needs to

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be enhanced for better work environments and enhance the patient's experience. This will
lead to the completion of the task within scheduled time and budget.
 Improved services to patients – another grand opportunity is to provide better and
improved services to the patients. The patients are the major stakeholders that are
responsible for the sustainability of the hospital, and the major objective of the hospital is
the maximum satisfaction of patients. Therefore, it is a major opportunity for me to
achieve in near future.
 Better human resource – human resource is the major factor for the success of any
organization, especially a service organization like a hospital. The major opportunity is to
provide the best staff with the best competencies within the organization.
Threats
 Competition – one of the threat is an increase in competition in the hospitality industry,
there are various leading hospitals, the threat to the existing leaders as well as a threat to
new entrants increases in this industry. In order to sustain in the competitive
environment, it is essential to gain competitive advantage
 Resource availability – availability of the resources is another threat to the company, as
the appropriate medication is a necessity for the hospital, and some machines are urgently
required considering the emergency case, for which the resource availability is a major
concern
 Coordination – coordination is very important within the hospital, in order to perform the
task within schedule and maximize the patient’s satisfaction (Megginson, 2017)

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Long-term goals
Long-term goals are important to structure, for a successful career. These include where you
want to see yourself in future, let us say in the next three or five years. These goals require
planning and time, which needs to be realistic (Akkermans, et al., 2015). I structure long-term
goals that I want to accomplish in the next three years of my career at the hospital; some of them
are as follows:
 The growth of the hospital
 Gain a competitive advantage in the healthcare sector
 Better services related to health issues
 Become senior manager
 Enhance patient satisfaction
Short term goals
Short-term goals include the things or task you want to accomplish in the near future that is
within one year. These can happen or achieved quickly and are directed towards the long-term
goals. Some of the short-term goals that I planned to achieve in one year are as follows:
 Provide better equipment
 Availability of medicine within the hospital premises
 Filling the required human resource gap
 Providing training to employees
 Provide a healthy environment
 Appropriate allocation of resources
 Better coordination among all the stakeholders

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 Motivated staff
 Managed IT system
 Better policies for employees
The next step in the development plan was to decide on action, activities, or strategies to attain
those goals. The goals will not be accomplished by planning, there must be some action plan
decided that would lead us to the short-term and long-term goals.
S.M.A.R.T Goals
 Specific- the goal that needs to be achieved, and is specific in nature. My specific goal in
this planning is the growth of the hospital and providing better service
 Measurable- this includes the parameters that will tell if the goal is achieved or not. In my
case, the measurable parameter can be the patient’s satisfaction, retaining doctors and
other staff members within the hospital. Moreover, an increase in equipment, a decrease
in health issues
 Attainable- these include the ways or direction that will lead us to achieve the goal; it
includes recognizing opportunities that bring goal achievement more closely. In my case,
it includes, hiring more people, providing better equipment, creating more favorable
policies, availability of medicines on time, and managing everyday problems in hospital
 Realistic- the goals must be realistic, that is to confirm if goals set can be accomplished
or not. In my plan, the goal is realistic, with proper problem solving, hiring human
resource, and another day to day activities the goal can be accomplished
 Timely- the goal set should be bounded with time so that there must be an urgency to
complete those goals. The goal of growth of hospital needs a minimum of a year to three

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years to see expected results, but the goal of providing a better service can be achieved
within six months of practice (Ratcliffe, 2016).
The action was taken to achieve the goals
 Assessing resources – the activities I need to conduct include assessing if the existing
resources are enough for operations at hospitals, and if yes then ensuring that are they
allocated and utilized appropriately (O'Neil, 2014)
 Update policies and frameworks - the policies and frameworks need to be revised to
accomplish the goals and objective set for me and change employees objectives accordingly
 Allocate financial resources and Budgeting - allocation of the budget is another strategy
to work upon that will affect the overall growth of the company. The allocation of financial
resources for activities according to the priority list (Schick, 2014)
 Scheduling and assess needs of the staff- this activity includes providing schedules for
staff and all the employees for timely completion of tasks assigned and analyze the needs of
staff, it is essential to fulfilling the needs of the staff to motivate them to work more
effectively for the organization
 Coordination with doctors, patients, nurses, pharmacists, specialist surgeons-
coordination is the most important activity to be performed by me, as a manager. The
stakeholders are working isolated, which needs to be coordinated and integrated for an
achievable results
 Ensure treatment, rehabilitation and patient quality care- another activity that needs to
perform is ensuring if appropriate treatment is provided to every patient, and check if patient
care is conducted with high quality

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 Provide talent development for staff- another important strategy includes, providing
talent development. The need for training and development is to be identified and then most
suitable training must be provided to staff for more effective and efficient work (Davis, et
al., 2016)
 Hiring the right person for the right position- human resource plays the most important
role in any organization, and in the healthcare industry, it the service by human capital
which makes a hospital successful. Therefore, staffing is an important activity that I should
conduct by hiring the right amount of people and placing them in the right position
according to their capability
 Managing teamwork- managing team is a major responsibility of a manager.
Management of work in-group is different than managing an individual. It is the efforts of a
group that lead to a successful project o task (Ghaderi, 2016)
 Technology innovation- technology used in the hospital must be updated. Upgraded
technology leads to more efficient work and it will help doctors to provide better treatment
for their patients (Page, 2014)
 Improve health care- their need to make an overall improvement in providing health care
services like providing pharmacy within the hospital, and personal assistance to the patients,
overnight helping staff needs to be there with the patient whenever required
 Appropriate problem-solving technique – conflicts, and issues are part of every
organization and every team, there must be a proper technique for solving problem or issues.
This is to be done to avoid delays in scheduled work. The issue cannot only hamper patients
but will also hamper the environment of the hospital. The importance of a healthy

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environment is well known to everyone, it is most important to maintain peace in the
organization (Van & Berends, 2018)
 Redefining roles of employees – for example in case of nurses, the time given by them to
patients must be managed, so that they become more accessible to the patients, especially
with a severe health issue like cancer (Gould, 2017).
Next step includes an “Evaluation of the plan,” after the construction of development plan the
plan needs to be evaluated if the plan developed is fulfilling the actual goal we want to achieve.
If not, the plan has to be revised (Hanson & Casey, 2017). After evaluation, the next step is
“Reflect often,” this steps involved evaluation or assessment of the progress early and regularly
so that one does not have to wait for long to assess the progress and then change the whole plan.
Regular assessment will enable us to make regular changes as per the progress. For this step, I
have to maintain a daily log or journal of the progress of action taken or completed. The last step
is “Creating a portfolio of the accomplishment,” this needs to be done, for more organized
structure, and ensure the accomplishment are connected to the plan.
After, the completion of the professional development plan, I was having a direction, towards
which I need to work in the future to attain specific goals and held responsible for the growth of
the hospital. I get to understand the relevance of this plan. It helped me to understand where I am
right now, and where I want to reach. According to that, I can plan how to fill this gap with the
activities or strategies I needed to conduct. From this experience, I learn how to make a career
development plan, step by step. With this, my long-term and short-term career goals were clear,
for which I will work. Now, after the planning part, I will implement the strategies I decided to
achieve those goals. After having the career development plan, when I will be assessing my
progress or strategies implemented, there will be something, which I could refer back. I will be

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able to control the activities conducted, by analyzing if the implemented plan is working as per
the planned program, and in case of any deviations, it can be improved or revised. With this, I
know the skills, experience, or qualification I still need to acquire for a successful career.