Culture Change in Healthcare

Leaders of successful hospitals realize that, for their organizations to remain sustainable in a dynamic and unpredictable health care environment there must be an understanding of and strong commitment to the organizational culture. However, nursing leaders have been unsuccessful in achieving the types of cultural changes that lead to an increase in quality of care and in the job satisfaction of nurses. This book, address a method to identify any cultural differences among the key stakeholder groups with respect to attributes identified as necessary for a Magnet work environment. Specifically nurse leadership interventions to obtain Magnet status in a Southeast medical center in the United States, were used to compare nurse leadership, staff nurses, and physician leadership groups. These interventions were used to compare the perceptions of Magnet attributes, the priorities of Magnet attributes, and the degree of acceptance of the Magnet attributes. The analysis should help small, medium, and large hospitals determine where gaps might reside between the three groups in order to move to a Magnet or Magnet-like culture. A cultural change model for nursing is also presented.