Center City Hospital is a large outpatient surgery center in a mid-size urban area of Kansas. The CEO, Director of Nursing (DON), and HR manager are concerned with a morale issue amongst the nursing staff of the organization. During the past year, the hospital has been trying to change the culture to become more profit and patient centered.

 

Organizational Design: Full-time staffing of the hospital is operational. This includes the CEO, DON, human resources management (HRM), finance, risk management, and unit managers for each section of the surgery center. Nursing staff within the center is outsourced, and nurses are hired on as conditional permanent staff. The doctors are independent contractors with the hospital and are on yearly contracts.

Challenge and Request Criteria: The CEO, DON, and the HRM believe the morale of nurses is at an all-time low, and the relationship between doctors, unit managers, and nurses is damaging to the mission of the hospital. The CEO is concerned about losing physicians due to the lack of leadership skills displayed by the unit managers. The unit managers are concerned about the stress level for the nurses and blame the arrogant behavior of the physicians as the cause of stress. The CEO, DON, and HRM request an OD intervention for all internal managers with the intent of developing a common focus of leading a united team. The leadership team requires that this be addressed in a 1-day workshop and that a visible improvement be seen over the next 12 months. As defined by the leadership team, the intervention

• is to develop stronger leadership skills within the unit manager staffing, and
• must result with visible improvement over the subsequent 12 months.

Question:

1) Develop the action research process.

2) Select the diagnostic process for the planning phase.

3) Defend your reasoning for the choice.

4) Classify the intervention type.

5) Define how you will implement the intervention type.

6) Utilize the action research checking phase to validate the change outcome.