Author: chris

Many managers assume that numbers do not lie but, when measuring performance, they often do not tell the whole story. For example, your organization’s sales may have increased 7% over the last year but there is no metric to show that the overall industry has increased 18%. Managers are not seeing the whole picture if they are viewing incorrect numbers or failing to consider qualitative data that may better place the numbers in context.

To Prepare for this Discussion, take a moment to review the articles “The Five Traps of Performance Measurement” (Likierman, 2009), and “Three Rules for Making a Company Truly Great” (Raynor & Ahmed, 2013).

Post by Day 5, the following:

Describe how 2–3 of the specific methods discussed in the articles have been, or could be, used to improve performance in your organization or one with which you are familiar.

Respond by Day 7 to two or more of your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

• Provide additional insight into the methods discussed by your peers to improve performance.
• Discuss alternative methods that might be used to improve performance in the organizations discussed by your peers.

Support your comments with your own experiences, the weekly resources, and/or additional research.

As the new HR Manager, you have put together some preliminary reports for the CEO. One of the reports you compiled focuses on employee turnover. The company you work for is an organization with aggressive expansion goals. In the last 2 years, it has continually hired new employees, yet it has not achieved the staffing levels it desired. The company knew that some employees had left the organization, but turnover rates had not been formally tracked.

After your preliminary fact-finding, you were surprised to discover that the turnover rate for the past year was 38%. You know the CEO will not be pleased with this turnover rate, and you have made the decision to prepare yourself more before presenting the report to the CEO. Because turnover presents a significant cost for an organization, you recognize that this will be an opportunity for you to demonstrate how you can partner with the executive team to turn this situation around and help the company be more competitive. Prepare a short presentation for the CEO on the situation and possible reasons why employees are leaving at such a high rate.

As you are preparing your presentation, consider the following:

• In detail, discuss some of the general reasons why employees tend to leave organizations.
• You plan to present the financial impact to the CEO. This will help the CEO to get a real sense of the significance of the situation. What factors will you consider in preparing this financial estimate? For this assignment, you are not required to determine the actual dollar figure, but instead, you are to consider what would contribute to the cost of turnover.
• Being proactive, what measures can be taken to assess the morale of current employees and how likely they are to leave or stay?
  • Describe at least 3 methods you could use to measure employee morale.
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method?

Continuing with the course project you started in Week 1, this week, you will interview a professional nurse with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) who could be a mentor to you.

Tasks

Interview a professional nurse with a BSN who could be a mentor to you and who exemplifies the type of nurse you want to become.

Write a 1- to 2-page interview report. In your report, include the following:

• Identify and describe the attributes that make this nurse a role model for you.
• Explain the beliefs, values, attitudes, and philosophies this nurse demonstrates and relate it to your long-term goals.

• Describe the role of the nurse based on beliefs, values, attitudes, and philosophies.
• APA format

In your own words describe the characteristics of an exemplary leader. Be specific and provide examples to clarify your position. Then select a current leader (in any arena), research him or her, and describe what behaviors she or he demonstrates that leads you to believe she or he embodies the definition you have provided. Be sure to provide an APA citation for any resources that you use to support your post.

 

The Individual and Society

Walsh’s 2009 article, “Understanding Fear Using My Sociological Imagination,” reviews four sociological theories (functionalism, conflict, postmodernism, and interactionism) that attempt to explain the relationship between the individual and society. Select the theory that you believe most closely describes this relationship. Explain in what ways this theory accurately portrays this relationship. Include specific examples and reference the professional literature beyond your text

If people are already paid by their employer to carry out a job, why should it still be important for somebody to motivate them?

Suppose a worker is much more interested in personal and family life than performing well or getting promoted. What approach might the worker’s supervisor use to motivate him or her toward high performance?

A major strategy for helping others grow and develop is to be a nurturing, positive person. Discuss how a nurturing person promotes the growth of others.

What is your opinion on whether workers have a responsibility to help each other grow and develop?

Prior to completing this discussion, please read Modules 5 and 6 in the textbook and review any relevant Instructor Guidance. You may be interested in viewing the interactive infographic within Module 6 to learn more about specific safety statistics.

For this post, you will analyze the major themes of Health and Well-Being, Family and Parenting, Education, Culture and Gender as factors influencing the domain of physical development, specifically safety.  Think about and comment on how child and adolescent safety regulations have changed over the past few decades.  Provide examples of new safety guidelines that did not exist either when you were growing up, or when your parents were growing up. Then, look through the recommended resources for Week 3 and/or other scholarly articles from the Ashford University Library website and find and report on 3 statistics specifically related to child and adolescent safety from this current decade (2010-present) within each of the 3 stages of infancy/toddlerhood, childhood, and adolescence. In other words, you will have 1 unique statistic for each of the 3 stages. Throughout your post, demonstrate a foundational knowledge of the children’s developmental continuum, from conception, by addressing unique safety standards. See the example below:

One statistic found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website states that, “Child safety seats reduce the risk of death in passenger cars by 71% for infants, and by 54% for toddlers ages 1 to 4 years.” (Centersfor Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). Reference: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). Injury prevention and control: Motor vehicle safety. Retrieved from: http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Child_Passenger_Safety/CPS-Factsheet.html.

Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your peers.  In your responses, consider how these safety statistics have changed over time and address how this may have impacted survival rates in our parents’ or grandparents’ generations.  Then, provide a different statistic than the one they found regarding the specific safety regulation addressed or address another change we’ve seen that neither your classmates nor you identified in your original post.

Discussion 2

Ashford University Discussion

Quality of care and patient safety has become a driving force in the delivery of health care in the twenty-first century. Your paper should address the following:

Explain the role of quality oversight in health care organizations and elaborate on how non-clinical personnel contribute to the process.

Identify and describe three stakeholder organizations or agencies that contribute to quality oversight within health care organizations in a substantial way. Include at least one government and one non-government organization/agency that focuses on quality of care within the health care field.

Answer the following questions for each organization/agency:

a. How does this organization/agency contribute to quality of care and patient safety?

b. What specific types of oversight does this organization/agency provide?

c. What are some of the repercussions that a health care organization could face for violating the standards of the organization/agency?

Compare and contrast the three organizations/agencies.

Who are some of the other stakeholders involved in promoting quality of care in health care and what role do they play?

Given the vast amount of mandatory regulations imposed upon the health care industry, explain why a health care organization might subject itself to participate in voluntary accreditation activities.

Your Paper:

Must be three to four double-spaced pages in length (excluding the title and reference pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.

Must include a title page with the following information:

a. Title of paper

b. Student’s name

c. Course name and number

d. Instructor’s name

e. Date submitted

Must begin with an introductory paragraph that has a succinct thesis statement.

Must address the topic of the paper with critical thought.

Must end with a conclusion that reaffirms the thesis.

Must use at least three scholarly sources; one source must be obtained at the Ashford library. Sources must be cited according to APA style, as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.

Must include a reference page.

 

Examine the film Stranger With a Camera using guidelines from the American Anthropological Association’s “Code of Ethics.” These filmmakers were not anthropologists and thus were not aware of this ethical code (which was written many years later) however if we were to evaluate their methods using this code, what might we discover?

Health reform is mired in the morass of multitiered payment systems and multiple modes of access, limited by the ability to seek and to pay. Increasingly, patients are interacting with multiple entities within the system, causing more and more confusion on the part of the patient. According to recent research, patients’ trust in the system, providers, and insurers continues to decline. This may result in a decline in individual health and an increase in costs for health care.

Investigate the declining trust in the health care system from an ethical and moral position. You may use the four principles plus attention to scope model of Beauchamp and Childress or any other ethical model that you choose to address this.

Complete the following:

• State what model you will use to investigate this issue.
• Identify 2 or more legal issues contributing to this problem.
• Identify 2 or more economic and financial issues contributing to this problem.
• Analyze the impact of various issues that are contributing to this problem, and rank them in order from greatest to least impact.
• Propose at least 1 modification that would increase trust in the health care system with rationale.