Reflective Journal - Week 10

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

I learned about staffing and how difficult it is. I also learned about nursing career development, and what steps it takes to continue career goals. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

The team activity of the staffing assignment was hard. It was hard putting 4 heads together to put up a decent schedule. It wasn't super organized by doing it that way. What I realized is that it really ultimately needs to really only involve one person to think hard about it and figure it out, because if you put too many cooks in the kitchen, per se, it is ultimate chaos trying to accomplish the ending goal. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

I learned to appreciate more what it takes to develop a schedule. Luckily we didn't have staff complaining about it either. That could make it even more hard. But it is more important to meet the demands of the unit. 

4. You personal feelings about the material covered.

I learned the importance of PRN staff to be used especially when they are needed to fill in the gaps in the schedule. I worked for a unit once that refused to allow me to go to PRN status to meet the demands of my family. So I reached out to my old boss who allowed me to come back and work for her as PRN. After completing this week's activities, I realized that it is important to have that filler staff to ensure that the gaps can be filled when necessary. 

Budget Interview

For this assignment I interviewed my brother-in-law who does the budgeting for his CFO for Vivnt Solar. He is a business analyst and works on all of the budgeting for the company. It was really interesting to hear everything he had to share in regards to the budgeting for the company. He knows how much everyone makes and knows what cuts they decide to make as he works hand in hand with the CFO of the company. It was interesting to hear everything that goes into the budget of a large successful company.

Reflective Journal - Week 9

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.
I learned the direction that nursing is headed. It was interesting to hear that soon more places will require bachelor's degrees. This was interesting to me.

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?
I honestly feel that Utah is a little bit behind in requiring that. I think if they came forward and required this, that there would be a significant nursing shortage. I know on our floor whenever there is a new leadership position opening, there is always a difficult time filling it because of the lack of people that currently have their bachelor's degrees.

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.
Well I am currently working on my bachelor's degree, and my intentions are to be in nursing management. With bachelor's degrees coming to be a new standard, it makes me wonder if eventually it will be required to have a master's degree for nurse managers.

4. You personal feelings about the material covered.
I think it is valuable information to share. As mentioned, while I don't see that this will be something required anytime soon here in Utah, I do know that it is starting to be requirements more and more in other states. I do think it is important to bring this to light to all current nurses without BSN's so that they can start working on their degrees.

Reflective Journal - Week 8

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

I learned about budgets in a hospital setting and the importance of budgets in the hospitals. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

I appreciated this week's learning experiences. This was all new for me. I did have a hard time actually understanding it all without being in a face to face classroom, there was no room for discussion and asking questions, but it was interesting to learn about this information and the value of using it in a hospital setting, because it is essential for the success of hospital organizations. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

Well since I eventually am hoping to be in nursing management, I will definitely be using the tools I used in this week's lesson. It also made me think of ways that I could cut back personally in my job. Thinking about only bringing the supplies I need into the patient's rooms and trying to minimize the supplies I need to get my job done. I also realized the biggest expense was for staff. With this in mind, I will try to be better at sending staff home when I am charging to make sure that I am keeping us within our budgeting needs for my unit. 

4. You personal feelings about the material covered. 

I feel that it is extremely valuable and essential information especially for leaders in health care. I hope to learn more about it in the future. 

Firing-Discipline Interview

For this assignment I interviewed my Step-Mom who works as an office manager for Allstates Landscaping. It was interesting to see the perspective of someone who fires people. It is not something people like to do and are very uncomfortable with letting people go. It seems like there are a lot of processes in place before just coming straight forward and letting someone go.

I learned that there are interesting people out there that do interesting things to cause grounds for firing, but what it comes down to for this company anyway, is if people are causing a lot of problems with other employees and costing the company  a lot of money, then they don't like to keep people around. People need to be able to do their job expectations, and if they consistently are not doing that, then they aren't worth it to keep them around.

Reflective Journal - Week 7

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

This week I learned about the many characteristics that potentially make a woman a better leader than a man. I also learned about the various leadership roles in hospital settings. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

I personally feel that we were trying to be persuaded that women can be better leaders by the articles and videos that we had to watch, but in our team's discussions, we all have had better experiences with male leaders. Everyone feels that women are more emotionally charged in general and make a lot of decisions based on emotions, and because of that, we felt that men would be better as a leader. 

I personally feel that a mix of men and women is always best. Everyone has great things to bring to the table, and a good mix of the two genders can create a better balanced work environment. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

I was actually thinking today about all of the charge nurses on our floor and actually that women tend to do better than men in their roles because they are more willing to help out the staff and to be there when people need them. The male charge nurses we work with on our floor tend to me more authoritative and tend to be more bossy than helpful. 

4. You personal feelings about the material covered.

I feel it was interesting to learn this material. I am interested to see the survey results when we begin to start doing our survey and writing our paper on the power article assignment.