Healthcare executives

Week 4 Discussion Board
Due: Feb 12, 2019 at 5:00 PM

1.Why should healthcare executives conduct a job analysis? What purpose does it serve?

2.What are job descriptions and job specifications? What is their relationship to job analysis? What do you think will happen if a healthcare organization decides not to use any job descriptions?

3. Should there be a more precise definition of reasonable accommodation in the Americans with Disabilities Act? Why or why not?

4. Why is sexual harassment so prevalent in the healthcare environment? What can be done to break this historical pattern?

5. Because employee handbooks may be used to contest a disciplinary procedure, what advice would you give to a workgroup developing an employee handbook?

6. Consider the case of a physician who has been practicing for 15 years and is one of the few well-established physicians in a small community. How would you respond if you learned about this physician's abuse of alcohol or drugs?

7.How can the existence of a high-quality job analysis make a particular human resources function, such as employee selection, less legally vulnerable?

8.Are healthcare jobs static, or do they change over time? What may cause a job to change over time? What implications does this change have for job analysis?

9.Describe and discuss future-oriented job analysis and generic job analysis. How may each be used to help healthcare executives cope with a rapidly changing and competitive environment? What are some potential pitfalls of each approach?

10.What are the advantages and disadvantages of using multiskilled health practitioners?

11. Have federal antidiscrimination laws gone too far? Should public policy in the United States seek a return to employment-at-will?

12. What does “public policy exception to employment-at-will” mean?

Solution

Question 1: Why should healthcare executives conduct a job analysis? What purpose does it serve?

Answer: Job analysis is used to determine the specifications and requirements of a job (Landau & Rohmert, 2017). It tells that which equipment and skills are required for the job along with the associated risks and health hazards. This demonstrates the complete working conditions and requirements. Healthcare executives should conduct job analysis because they will help in determining the right person for the job. They will know the health risks associated and can refer to the candidate best suited. Therefore, the purpose of conducting a job analysis by a healthcare executive is to recruit the best future candidate.

Question 2: What are job descriptions and job specifications? What is their relationship to job analysis? What do you think will happen if a healthcare organization decides not to use any job descriptions?

Answer: Job description means the explanation of duties and responsibilities and the salary brackets along with the designation (Tahsildari & Shahnaei, 2015). Job specification means the explanation of minimum qualification, education, experience, skills of the candidate to get selected for a specific job. Job description and job specification define the job, and they are used to explain the job. Therefore, in job analysis both of these terms are the key constituents. If the healthcare executive doesn’t use any job description, he will not be able to refer the right candidate because he won’t know the job requirements and the risks associated with the job. The wrong candidate might get selected and be prone to risks.

Question 3: Should there be a more precise definition of reasonable accommodation in the Americans with Disabilities Act? Why or why not?

Answer: In my opinion, the definition of ‘Reasonable Accommodation’ in ‘Americans with Disabilities’ can’t be made precise. This is because the disabilities differ from person to person and even there is a difference in the same disability’s severity in different persons. The current definition sets reasonable accommodation as per the case to case. It explains to restructure jobs, reevaluate schedules, providing assistance, changing the tasks etc. These are the basic prerequisites which every workplace has to follow. Therefore, the structured definition is not feasible to make for all the workplaces, and they can follow this definition and use the experience to vary it in the workplace.

Question 4: Why is sexual harassment so prevalent in the healthcare environment? What can be done to break this historical pattern?

Answer: In the healthcare environment, there is a number of female employees than those of male. This is because there are female doctors, nurses and other professionals who are female. Usually, the superior staff is female, and the junior staff is female. This creates hegemony in the strengths of the employees. This usually becomes the reason for sexual harassment. The staff spends a lot of time together in such environments, and this can also cause this dilemma (Crampton, Wilkinson, Anderson, Walthert, & Wilson, 2015). This historical pattern can be broken if rules are defined in the working places and people are punished who break such rules. The rules will be equal for males and females. Therefore, everyone will be saved from sexual harassment.

Question 5: Because employee handbooks may be used to contest a disciplinary procedure, what advice would you give to a workgroup developing an employee handbook?

Answer: Employee handbook can be used to give the guidelines, SOPs and the regulations of the workplace and the job responsibilities. Every employee has a handbook, and he can also record the duties performed by him and anything unusual experienced by him at the workplace. Therefore, my advice to the workgroup developing handbook is to define the SOPs and regulations clearly and in compliance with everyone at the workplace so that every one may follow them easily. This will gain the trust of employees, and they will follow those guidelines and record anything unusual from routine truthfully.

Question 6: Consider the case of a physician who has been practising for 15 years and is one of the few well-established physicians in a small community. How would you respond if you learned about this physician's abuse of alcohol or drugs?

Answer: Since the physician has been in the community for way too long in a small community, he must have gained trust and sincerity from the people of that community. He has established his position in the community, and if anything absurd is heard of him, I would first discover the reliability of the news. If the news is true, I will use a lawsuit against the physician because the abuse of alcohol or drugs by the physician is also dangerous for the people of the community he is dealing with. This abuse should be stopped.

Question 7: How can the existence of a high-quality job analysis make particular human resources function, such as employee selection, less legally vulnerable?

Answer: The existence of high-quality job analysis makes human resources perform well because human resources hire and fire the employees. If there is a job analysis system in the organization, HR will be able to hire the right persons for the jobs. They will know which candidates to interview and select from the pool because they will have the analysis of the job and the candidates. This makes the HR less vulnerable to legal actions because every employee or candidate would know that there is no discrimination based on sex, education or qualification for the relevant job. Therefore, they will not put a lawsuit against the organization.

Question 8: Are healthcare jobs static, or do they change over time? What may cause a job to change over time? What implications does this change have for job analysis?

Answer: Healthcare jobs change over time rather than being static. This is because there are new technologies being employed in the organizations over time and they require new specialities and skills (Keyworth, Hart, Armitage, & Tully, 2016). New diseases and outbreaks also change the ways to tackle them and treat the patients. New medicines have to be examined and experimented on the patients. Similarly, every patient needs a different way to handle him. This makes the jobs of the healthcare dynamic. This puts dynamics on job analysis. New job descriptions and specifications have to be indulged in the systems, and this changes the job analysis too.

Question 9: Describe and discuss future-oriented job analysis and generic job analysis. How may each be used to help healthcare executives cope with a rapidly changing and competitive environment? What are some potential pitfalls of each approach?

Answer: Generic job analysis is the one which is predefined by the organization to analyze the job specifications and job descriptions. This is used by healthcare executives to hire the right candidates for the right jobs. Future-oriented job analysis is adopted for the organizations which are changing with time and adopting new technologies and procedures. They have to make the job analysis dynamic as per the needs of the time. Generic job analysis is used for generic jobs, and future-oriented job analysis is used for the changing job natures by healthcare executives. There are many pitfalls for generic job analysis like a conventional system for dynamic analysis, static descriptions of jobs and hiring of an under-talented candidate. The future-oriented job analysis has expensiveness, time-consuming and resource management as pitfalls.

Question 10: What are the advantages and disadvantages of using multi-skilled health practitioners?

Answer: Using multi-skilled health professionals have the following advantages and disadvantages.

Disadvantages:

·         They may feel an extra burden of work.

·         Their productivity may fall due to heavy loads of work.

·         They might not be compensated well for their services.

·         They have to work simultaneously for different patients and for different scopes of work. This might divert their focus.

Advantages:

·         If given time and resources, they perform with higher productivities.

·         They have greater job satisfaction.

·         They feel better by the feeling that they are serving the people.

·         They find fast and economical solutions for different problems.

·         Organizations benefit from the services of multi-skilled healthcare professionals.

Question 11: Have federal antidiscrimination laws gone too far? Should public policy in the United States seek a return to employment-at-will?

Answer: Federal antidiscrimination laws have not gone too far. This is because antidiscrimination is beneficial for everyone whether the employer or the employee. The rules and regulations in this law prevent the biases and the exploitation of either employer or employee. The public policy in the US should not be returned to employment-at-will. This is because this mode of employment gives the right to employer and employee to fire or quit without any notice or reason. This creates a hassle in the job market and is harmful to jobs securities.

Question 12: What does “public policy exception to employment-at-will” mean?

The ‘public policy exception to employment-at-will’ means that the employer’s rights of controlling the employee’s job status are subject to the exceptions in favour of the employee and the public. The employer has to make exceptions when firing the employee on the basis of ‘at-will’ law. These exceptions are checked by the courts, and the rights of the employee are balanced in favour of public and employee mostly. Employers are subject to act not in contrast to the public favor. Therefore, employment has been shifted away from at-will quadrant. If it is prevailing in some areas, it is subject to exceptions.

References

Crampton, P., Wilkinson, T., Anderson, L., Walthert, S., & Wilson, H. (2015). Bullying in health care settings: time for a whole-of-system response. NZ Med J, 128(1424), 10-13.

Keyworth, C., Hart, J., Armitage, C. A., & Tully, M. P. (2016). Healthcare professional behaviour change using technological supports: A realist literature review. Public Health. Conference Abstract: 2nd Behaviour Change Conference: Digital Health and Wellbeing. doi: 10.3389/conf. FPUBH (Vol. 73).

Landau, K., & Rohmert, W. (. (2017). Recent developments in job analysis (Vol. 24). Taylor & Francis.

Tahsildari, A., & Shahnaei, S. (2015). Enhancing Organizational Effectiveness by Performance Appraisal, Training, Employee Participation, and Job Definition. European Journal of Business and Management, 7(12), 56-63.