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Biomedical subjects

Charles R McConnell

Publications and source records attributed to Charles R McConnell.

17 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2002

The health care professional as a manager: finding the critical balance in a dual role.

The health care professional who assumes a management role must recognize that he or she is adopting a second and concurrent career of equal importance to his or her primary occupation. Many such managers have considerable difficulty balancing the two sides of the role because most are well trained in their specialties but enter management with little or no preparation for management. Lack of preparation and inadequate understanding of the requirements of the management side of the role lead to discomfort in management matters and in turn frequently cause a manager to seek refuge in being more of a specialist than manager. The most successful managers will be those who develop the ability to appropriately balance the sides of the dual role.

Career Mobility↗
PubMed2002

Making change work for you--or at least not against you.

Resistance is an automatic response by most people--managers as well as nonmanagerial employees--to change that is thrust on them. Resistance arises in large part from a feeling of helplessness in the presence of that which the individual cannot control. Change is resisted by most people because of centuries of conditioning that taught them to seek security in constancy. Today's security, however, more likely lies in flexibility and adaptability. The department manager has the difficult task of maintaining a positive attitude in the face of change, accepting that which cannot be controlled and providing a positive role model for employees. Although one may feel helpless in the presence of change, there is always part of the circumstances one can influence or control. People make change work for themselves by accepting what they cannot control and taking ownership of what they can control.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2002

The manager and continuing education.

Continuing education in health care organizations consists of that which is required by law or regulation and that which is optional. The required is done because it must be done; the other, including most management development and some staff education, is often ignored. Nonrequired education is one of the first items to go during budget-cutting exercises. Yet continuing education at all levels, for managers as well as nonmanagers, is essential in keeping health care workers abreast of rapid change. Much continuing education, even that for rank-and-file staff, is up to the department manager, and with few exceptions, the pursuit of continuing management development is left largely to the individual manager. The department manager is an educator of staff and is also largely responsible for self-development.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The manager's approach to employee performance problems.

Employee performance problems essentially take two forms: those that are motivational in origin and those resulting from skill deficiencies. Both fall within the province of the department manager. Performance problems differ from problems of conduct in that traditional disciplinary processes do not apply. Rather, performance problems are addressed through educational and remedial processes. The manager has a basic responsibility to ensure that everything reasonable is done to help each employee succeed. There are a number of steps the manager can take to address employee performance problems.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Document security: a funny thing happened on the way to the shredder.

In these days of close attention to security of information handled electronically, there is a tendency to overlook the security of hard-copy documents, particularly patient records and employee documentation. Document security is related to growing concerns for individual privacy; guidelines are furnished for protecting employee privacy by separating retention practices for business information from personal information. Sensitive documentation requires rules and procedures for processing, retaining, accessing, storing and eventually destroying. Also, documents that are missing or incomplete sometimes present unique problems for the organization. The article provides simple rules for safeguarding employee and patient documentation.

Confidentiality↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A department manager's guide to wage and hour laws and the control of overtime.

The department manager must be familiar with a few specific features of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), specifically those addressing the differences between exempt (salaried) employees and nonexempt (hourly) employees and the payment of overtime. The FLSA is the most frequently violated law relating to employment, and most department managers' concerns about the FLSA involve overtime. The manager must be thoroughly conversant with these specific portions of wage and hour law and must be aware of the common causes of overtime, while recognizing the legitimate use of overtime under certain circumstances and knowing what he or she can do to control the extent of overtime usage in the department. The control of overtime is often one of the manager's significant responsibilities.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Accepting leadership responsibility: preparing yourself to lead honestly, humanely, and effectively.

Many who enter management are ready and willing to accept the benefits of their positions, but not all are readily accepting of the full responsibilities of leadership. All too frequently, modern leadership appears self-serving, with the needs and desires of the leaders taking precedence over the needs of the followers and even the needs of the clients or customers. True leadership, however, should primarily benefit the followers rather than the leader. Leaders lead and followers follow for essentially the same reason, fulfillment of needs, so leaders and followers are fundamentally little different from each other. Every manager at every level has organizational superiors, so every leader is a follower as well. A true leader among managers is one who subordinates personal needs to the organization's needs, places employees well above self in importance, models appropriate behavior for employees, and functions as a facilitator in the employees' continuing efforts to get the necessary work done efficiently and effectively.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Interpersonal skills. What they are, how to improve them, and how to apply them.

Interpersonal skills are those essential skills involved in dealing with and relating to other people largely on a one-on-one basis. The interpersonal communication behavior of many people suggests they assume to have the ability to communicate effectively, which they do not possess and which they take for granted. One must work conscientiously to develop interpersonal competence by doing the right things at all times and doing them repeatedly until they become ingrained. As with any human skills, interpersonal skills can be improved through conscious effort. Successful interpersonal communication involves shaping the behavior of others, often while countering their shaping behavior. To have a chance of being successful, every interpersonal contact must have an objective and every effort must be made to avoid creating win-lose transactions whenever possible.

Competency-Based Education↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Getting your ideas into print: writing for a professional journal.

Those who have sometimes thought about writing for a professional journal should be encouraged by the fact that most journal writers are the same as journal readers-practitioners and educators with something of value to share with others. There are career-enhancing advantages in journal writing, and there can be a significant amount of personal satisfaction as well. Succeeding at writing and placing a journal article requires: selecting an appropriate topic; knowing the publication and its audience and framing the article in the appropriate style; working with the journal editor to create an acceptable manuscript, which includes responding positively to the editor's criticisms and suggestions; and observing all submission requirements and deadlines. One who follows this entire process to its positive conclusion will find that journal writing can be an exacting, demanding, frustrating--and immensely satisfying--professional activity.

Career Mobility↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The manager and oral presentations: from conference room to convention hall.

Public speaking is a skill that can prove to be of considerable value to health care managers, yet a great many managers have not been trained as speakers and thus tend to avoid speaking situations or approach them with fear and doubt. However, any working manager can become an effective speaker through conscious effort to do so. The keys to developing one's ability to deliver effective oral presentations are preparation and practice. Preparation includes knowing one's subject and one's audience, appropriately organizing the material, learning how to present information according to what one wishes to convey or accomplish, learning how to utilize visual aids, and working to improve one's manner of using language in a public setting. The same guidelines apply whether the manager is speaking to a small audience in a conference room or a large audience at a conference or convention. Beyond following the guidelines for appropriate preparation and delivery, regardless of scope of presentation and size of audience, success and a degree of comfort with public speaking come with practice, practice, practice.

Health Facility Administrators↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Larger, smaller, and flatter: the evolution of the modern health care organization.

In a changing world, organizations must change as surely as individuals must change. Recent years have seen an increase in organizational "flattening," the tendency to shrink the organizational structure through the removal of layers in the hierarchy. At present, flattening is especially prevalent in health care, particularly hospitals, as the industry adjusts to various external pressures through mergers, acquisitions, and sometimes closures. Although organizational growth, or "fattening," is usually slow, occurring sometimes imperceptibly over long periods, flattening is usually abrupt and therefore painful. Organizations are trimming down and becoming smaller unto themselves while becoming components of larger entities, health systems. Concurrent with these changes is the proliferation of freestanding provider organizations providing specialized services formerly offered only in the hospital setting. Especially affected are first-line supervisors and middle managers. Those who are fortunate enough to survive reengineering, merger, or organizational flattening will find their roles altered considerably. More work, more employees, more responsibility, more territory to cover overall-these are the lot of the department manager following most of today's organizational adjustments. The manager's primary defense against obsolescence in the new health care environment is to become as multifaceted as possible, recognizing that one's future security lies not in constancy and specialization but rather in flexibility and adaptability.

Delegation, Professional↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Motivating your employees and yourself: how different is the manager from the staff?

Managers often tend to behave as though they are responsive to different motivating forces than their employees. However, employees at all levels are much alike in terms of what they wish to obtain from their work. There are drives that vary in intensity from person to person, but the basic motivating forces remain the same. Essentially, it is not possible to "motivate" another person as such; it is possible only to create the conditions under which the individual can become self-motivated. The manager must appreciate the key principles of motivation, including the relationship between repetition and reinforcement and the importance of timely feedback. Also, the manager must learn what his or her legitimate role is concerning the fulfillment of employee needs. Successful managers will be those who are sensitive to their own needs and desires, credit their employees with the same or similar needs and desires, and treat employees in the manner in which they would like to be treated by higher management.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Succession planning: valuable process or pointless exercise?

Succession planning is the process of identifying people who could presently move into key positions or could do so after specifically targeted development occurs. The process identifies the better people in the organization and takes a consistent approach to assembling, analyzing, and retaining information about potential leaders and planning for their further development. At its simplest level, it is the development of a backup and potential successor to each manager; at its most formal, it is a documented plan for management succession at all levels in the organization. Strongly supportive of a policy of development and promotion from within the organization, succession planning also represents a proactive posture in respect to inevitable management turnover. In these days of rapid change in health care, no modern organization that expects to keep up with increasing competition can afford to drift-or even let a single department drift-although replacements are recruited for managers who resign, retire, or otherwise leave. On numerous occasions, however, all of the effort expended in succession planning seems wasted when potential successors either leave the organization or fail to live up to expectations, prompting one to wonder whether succession planning is little more than a pointless exercise.

Career Mobility↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Effective employee counseling for the first-line health care manager.

Counseling is an important supervisory skill applied for a number of purposes. Although the need for counseling is as constant as any need facing the manager, a number of commonly encountered barriers often prevent effective counseling. In most instances, counseling is a necessary step preceding disciplinary action, and it is always an important step in improving employee performance. Although the manager may not come to the job with expertise in counseling, counseling can nevertheless be learned through practice and the conscientious application of a few simple guidelines.

Counseling↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The policy crunch.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Absenteeism↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Managing employee performance.

Performance management consists of significantly more than periodic evaluation of performance. It is the art and science of dealing with employees in a manner intended to positively influence their thinking and behavior to achieve a desired level of performance. It is essential for the manager to always model positive behavior concerning performance; what one does or says as a manager always has an influence on others. The kinds of employee behavior most likely encountered relative to performance management efforts stem from resistance to change and lack of complete understanding of what is expected. Employee participation must be elicited whenever possible for performance improvement; as far as the inner working details of a specific job are concerned, there is no one who knows the job better than the person who does it everyday. For each task to be done, an employee needs to know what output is expected, how this output will be measured, and what standards are applied in assessing the output. Managing employee performance requires ongoing contact with each employee, regular feedback, and whatever coaching, counseling, and training are necessary to bring an employee back on track when a problem appears. Sustaining efficient and effective employee performance requires the manager's ongoing attention and involvement.

Administrative Personnel↗