<p> Leaders of organizations continually experience challenges when attempting to implement new strategies by aligning staff at various organizational levels to the new strategies. The effectiveness of alignment to strategy is demonstrated especially in how strategy manifests on the front line as staff respond to the mandate of the strategic changes. Organizational dynamics analyzed through a psychodynamic "lens" further explain the challenges of alignment to strategy. The health care industry experiences pressure to adjust their strategies to ensure quality patient care, especially because hospitals are under scrutiny to reduce hospital readmissions and address health disparities for disadvantaged groups of patients in surrounding communities. One strategy adjustment that hospitals are implementing is improving culturally competent care, which requires transformational changes in practice, especially at the front line: nurses. This qualitative, single-case study at a hospital in the eastern United States focuses on exploring nurses' experiences as they respond to a hospital's mandate of changes related to providing culturally competent care. Data were collected through 25 semistructured interviews, two focus groups, and historical and archival data. The findings from this study support literature on the challenges and tensions related to this transformative change in how care is delivered. The findings also reveal the anxiety that these challenges and tensions trigger at the institutional and individual levels and the resulting behaviors, interpreted by psychodynamic theory of basic assumption, where nurses fluctuated between approach and avoidance of the work.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3627604 |
| Date | 04 September 2014 |
| Creators | Ellis, Theresa Anne |
| Publisher | Fielding Graduate University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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