Healthcare Essay: Demonstrating The Relationship Between Human Factors, Workplace Performance And Safety

Question

Aim of assessment
This assessment Item provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the relationship that exists between human factors, workplace performance arid quality and safety In healthcare. Discussion and critique must be Informed by evidence from the literature.
Assessment task details
This assessment task requires students to respond to the following assessment 2 critical appraisal essay task: Informed by evidence from the literature ¡ dentify human factors that impacto n work performance and then critically analyse the relationship between these and qualityand safety ¡ n health care provision

Answer

Introduction
The study illustrated in the Healthcare essay deals with the concept of human factors such as environmental, organizational, various job factors, and human and individual characteristics, which can manipulate the behaviour at the work in such a way, which can affect health and safety. The knowledge of the human factors has been gone beyond the understanding of the specific employees to include many other aspects of the current workplace. In this section, there will be a discussion on identifying the various human factors and their impact on the work performance of the employees. This segment of Healthcare essay is an interesting study of interconnected elements and their behaviours, which allows knowing the various measures of improvement with the help of the cultural and procedure changes.

What is the impact of human factors discussed in the context of Healthcare essay on workplace performance?
According to Van der Voordt, & Jensen, (2017) workplace performance can be referred to as the various behaviours that are aligned with the organizational goals in which the employee works. Hence, the work performance of the person plays an essential role in the company’s growth. It happens because it highly influences the overall firm performance and its various functions. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), various human factors are involved with workplace behaviour and safety aspects. The key human factor identified by WHO is an organizational, job, and environmental factors. Besides, individual characteristics and human behaviour can also influence human factors. All these factors together affect the health and safety features of an organization. Similarly, these human factors can also make a huge adverse impact on healthcare.

The factors can be classified into various categories, which are demonstrated below within this Healthcare essay.

• Work patterns, overload, and task assignment: Healthcare has a significant workload on a daily basis, as the employees need to serve quality service and nursing care to the patients. Thereby, when more patients appear to healthcare organizations, the employees can feel a high workload. Besides, challenging work patterns can also create stress in various cases (Ifelebuegu et al., 2019). Moreover, if the tasks are not assigned properly staffs might not able to offer their full potential and dedication to the healthcare services. It will eventually affect work performance. Thus, these elements or factors make a considerable impact on work performance.
• Workplace environment and communication: It is one of the factors, which can affect the work performance of the employees and the company. In most scenarios, it is observed that due to busy schedule employees often do not get sufficient time for mutual communication. Therefore, healthcare staff cannot share experience and skills with other workers. This segment of Healthcare essay signifies that such kind of lack of communication can eventually affect the workplace environment. Besides, it also pollutes the overall work environment within a healthcare organization.
• Workplace culture: The concept of workplace culture explored in the report on Healthcare essay means the shared beliefs, values, and assumptions that need to be followed in the organization. An optimistic workplace culture always encourages the morale of the workforce and enhances the efficiency of teamwork. Thereby, overall efficiency and productivity can also be increased drastically. In a healthcare firm, positive workplace design and culture are very much necessary for maintaining service quality and consumer satisfaction. This element can also help healthcare firms to retain the workforce.
• Leadership and available resources: The Healthcare essay examines that these elements also play a vital role in organizational improvement and thereby considered as one of the major human factors. Effective leaders always guide the employees and identify their personal as well as professional problems. Often positive leaders interact with the employees on a regular basis and thus mutual understanding is established, which can make positive outcomes for the business performance. Leaders also supervise the workforce performance and offer effective feedback to the individuals, which help to improve productivity. In regards to healthcare as well as other organization, it is also essential for leaders to optimize the resources accurately, which can ease the work stress.
• Skill and competence of the workforce: Skills are always necessary for accomplishing the job goals effectively. Lack of skills or competency can create severe issues in healthcare and nursing. Besides, it can lead to improper healthcare, which will eventually create life risk for the patients. Moreover, when employees do not possess the necessary skills, it can affect work performance and productivity at large. Thereby, an organization must monitor the human factor regularly and find out skill gaps within the workforce to run a sustainable business. Besides, certain practices should be designed to enable the employees to use their knowledge and their skills, which will encourage them to learn more.
• Employee personality, attitude: According to the research conducted for Healthcare essay, attitude, characteristics, and behaviour of individuals are key components of personality. These factors make a huge impact on business communication and services within healthcare.
• Risk tolerance: Various risks need to identify effectively, which will help to reduce the possibility of risk occurrence. It is a necessary human factor for avoiding workplace hazards. Moreover, it is an integral part of the safety and health aspects of an organization.

Relationship between workplace environment and Work performance in Healthcare:
The study evolved in the Healthcare essay exemplifies the words of Jayaweera (2015) which stated that there are many ways by which the workplace environment can be defined. It can be the furniture dimensions or their arrangements, the layout of the offices, level of noise, temperature, and working conditions are some of the factors, which can have an impact on the work performed as well as on the job satisfaction. Usually, the physical environment at the workplace is having a major role in employee’s productivity those are engaged with healthcare (Sharpe et al., 2015). Apart from that, respective management can able to influence worker’s commitment as well as it should be monitored as well as it can be altered to suit the workers. However, it refers to changing aspects like as interpersonal relations, ethics, commitment, behaviour, drive as well as professionalism. Moreover, respective management must take an active part in describing the physical environment in which the health workers carry out their daily job to make it beneficial as well as conducive. Apart from that, management has to spend and utilize much time over controlling these factors of the work environment. However, it can be accomplished by improving on the physical workplace as well as delegating responsibilities, increasing accountability, facilities as well as encouraging teamwork. Moreover, it will promote loyalty as well as trust between encourage better teamwork and the various employees in health care. Besides, those health care employees develop a sense of ownership as well as belonging in health care centres (Pati et al., 2015). However, today’s management has to change the way of functioning in order to bring about effective changes in those circumstances. Apart from that, this context of Healthcare essay also determines that respective management has to utilize much time over controlling these factors of the work environment. In addition, efficient workplace communication is essential to cultivation of professionalism and success. Then employees who are all engaged with healthcare can able to communicate efficiently to each other. However, productivity will enhance due to proper communication such way more work should be done by health care workers. Moreover, these strategies made workplace less anxiety, more enjoyable between co-workers that are relying upon a positive attitude towards work as well as enhanced productivity. The group work environment is used to explain the surrounding conditions in which a health care employee operates. However, the work environment can be composed of physical conditions, such as office temperature, such as personal computers. It can also be related to factors such as work processes or procedures. Apart from that, another aspect of communication discussed in the Healthcare essay which affects productivity is noise level. However, the noise has unhelpful influence in terms of communication, frustration levels must enhance while productivity declines in relation to loudness and determination noise. Apart from that, the capability of a health worker to efficiently work in a crowd of many uncontrolled patients is limited. However, after a survey, it was reported that nine out of ten workers believed that a workspace quality affects the attitude of employees as well as enhanced their productivity (Koy et al., 2015). A healthy work environment is one that is empowering, safe as well a satisfying. Apart from that, the healthcare environment has been a key concern in the part of medical services. However, to keep maintain health care systems, healthy environment are also providing additional services in order to make patient's feel fresh as well as healthier. Apart from that, it is providing templates, soft training, guides, and checklists towards health care employees to help in improving their performance. However, the study examined in the Healthcare essay signifies that this approach will turn their work easier and decrease the error rate and progress patients’ satisfaction. Apart from that, health workers are completely engaged within key performance indicators (KPI) as well as setting meaningful goals towards respective work. It can be executed among the respective health worker as well as their supervisor or as part of a health care centres active performance management process. (Hitt & Tambe, 2016).

In the case of workplace health hazards are much higher in the case of the informal sector and small industry which are key fields of action on poverty alleviation, where people can work their way out of poverty. As per the research on Healthcare essay, safe workplaces contribute to sustainable development, which is the key to poverty reduction. Healthy workers are productive and raise healthy families. Thus healthy workers are a key strategy that is the goal in terms of overcoming poverty. The processes of surrounding communities, protecting workers as well as the environment for future generations have important common elements, such as pollution control and exposure reduction (Kartal, 2018).  

Impact of human factors on safety and health
Humans are not perfect and thus there is a high probability of failure. Various actions can lead to safety issues in healthcare. The factors identified in this segment of Healthcare essay are unintentional mistakes and errors, poor decision making or judgment and improper policies or procedures (Baradan, Dikmen & Akboga, 2019). The most workplace does not find out the potential hazards in the workplace and also does not evaluate the consequences of human factors. If leaders or employees do not take proper decisions regarding probable workplace risks, it can affect staff safety as well as healthcare services. Besides, they must examine various plans or practices before implementing them in healthcare organizations. Thus, the positive use of human factors can mitigate workplace risks. Besides, making awareness about risk management and necessary skills, healthcare firms can eliminate potential dangers within the workplace. However, the employees must be educated regarding their individual responsibilities and strong policies should be enforced. Simultaneously, OHSA regulations also must be followed in organizations to maintain safety aspects. Furthermore, periodic meetings can be conducted to discuss the various safety issues, which will help to develop effective risk management plans. Offering training regarding risk is also a necessary step along with sticking posters in the dangerous work areas (Brookhuis, De & Janssen, 2019).    

Critical analysis
Moreover, it has been seen after analysing the various aspects in the present Healthcare essay that the individual work performance is not stable and it can alter over the specific period. There are many studies, which show that the performance of the employees changes over a specific period. There are many factors, which can affect the work performance of the employees and for the organization (Xie & Carayon, 2015). Workplace policies often lead to such issues, as they change over time considering the trends and business requirements. Considering the consumer feedbacks and market trends, often management can change the business and workplace policies, which is quite profitable. However, employees could find it difficult to understand and adopt these policies effectively. Moreover, it has also been noted in this segment of Healthcare essay that new furnished policies also compel the healthcare staff to develop new workplace practices, which involve innovation and other features. In such a condition, if the existing employees do not have the necessary skills to realize the significance of these newly developed policies and practices, the service quality can be reduced drastically. On the other hand, leaders also need to guide the workers to adapt desired skills and practices positively. If leaders do not possess such a capability, it can dramatically affect the work environment, culture, as well as productivity. Thus, human factors are closely related to workplace performance and safety aspects.  

Conclusion
After analysing the contents of Healthcare essay, it can be concluded that occupational health and safety would donate to improve the employability of various workers in terms of workplace design, maintenance of a safe as well as healthy work environment, assessment of work demands, training as well as retraining, medical diagnosis, assessment of functional capacities and health screening. However, creating a healthy workplace environment does not have to be difficult or costly. The study covered in the healthcare essay also signifies that a healthy workplace environment improves productivity and reduces costs related to absenteeism, turnover, workers’ compensation, and medical claims. A summary, there are four aspects to look into when creating a healthy workplace environment, workplace culture, physical environment and health and lifestyle practice, occupational health & safety, supportive workplace environment.

References
Baradan, S., Dikmen, S. U., & Akboga Kale, O. (2019). Impact of human development on safety consciousness in construction. Healthcare essay. International journal of occupational safety and ergonomics, 25(1), 40-50.

Brookhuis, K. A., De Waard, D., & Janssen, W. H. (2019). Behavioural impacts of advanced driver assistance systems–an overview. European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, 1(3).

Dekker, S. (2016). Patient safety: a human factors approach. CRC Press.

Hitt, L. M., & Tambe, P. (2016). Health care information technology, work organization, and nursing home performance. ILR Review, 69(4), 834-859.

Ifelebuegu, A. O., Martins, O. A., Theophilus, S. C., & Arewa, A. O. (2019). The Role of Emotional Intelligence Factors in Workers’ Occupational Health and Safety Performance—A Case Study of the Petroleum Industry. Safety, 5(2), 30.

Jayaweera, T. (2015). Impact of work environmental factors on job performance, mediating role of work motivation: A study of hotel sector in England. International journal of business and management, 10(3), 271.

Kartal, N. (2018). Evaluating the relationship between work engagement, work alienation and work performance of healthcare professionals. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 11(3), 251-259.

Koy, V., Yunibhand, J., Angsuroch, Y., & Fisher, M. L. (2015). Relationship between nursing care quality, nurse staffing, nurse job satisfaction, nurse practice environment, and burnout: literature review. International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 3(8), 1825-1831.

Pati, D., Harvey Jr, T. E., Willis, D. A., & Pati, S. (2015). Healthcare essay Identifying elements of the health care environment that contribute to wayfinding. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 8(3), 44-67.

Sharpe Jr, R. E., Mehta, T. S., Eisenberg, R. L., & Kruskal, J. B. (2015). Strategic planning and radiology practice management in the new health care environment. Radiographics, 35(1), 239-253.

Van der Voordt, T., & Jensen, P. A. (2017, July). Healthcare essay Benchmarking of workplace performance. In ERES 2017: 24th Annual Conference of the European Real Estate Society.

Xie, A., & Carayon, P. (2015). A systematic review of human factors and ergonomics (HFE)-based healthcare system redesign for quality of care and patient safety. Ergonomics, 58(1), 33-49.