Posted: April 24th, 2025

1-1 Discussion: Examining Healthcare Organizational Culture

 An organization’s culture can have a big impact on its ability to successfully implement quality improvement initiatives. By examining situations where quality improvements were prevented from being implemented, we can learn the elements of a culture that can quickly make improvements impossible even when those improvements will lead to the saving of many, many lives.

Read about these three examples of problematic organizational cultures:

this article about Florence Nightingale

; 

this discussion about Ignaz Semmelweis

; and this article about a

culture of blame and denial

. Then, consider what elements of those organizational cultures were problematic. In the examples of Nightingale and Semmelweis, you will also see how these people applied logical analyses (analogous to the problem-solving frameworks discussed in this module) of metrics and data they collected.

In your initial post, address the following:

• Introduce yourself to the class by discussing your background in the nursing and healthcare administration industry.
• Discuss your initial reaction to the examples of resistance to improvement initiatives.
• Describe a few reasons for hesitancy toward the different quality improvement initiatives.

  Do you think those reasons apply to today’s healthcare industry?

Three examples Links:

this article about Florence Nightingale:

Civil War Medicine: Florence Nightingale, The Influencer

this discussion about Ignaz Semmelweis:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6333090/

culture of blame and denial:

https://healthmanagement.org/c/hospital/issuearticle/going-from-a-culture-of-blame-and-denial-to-a-culture-of-safety

About Me

My name is Deanna Buchanan, and I am from a small town called Chester, SC. I have a 13-year-old son and I’m currently working as a patient access consultant. I graduated from Winthrop University in 2011 majoring in Speech Pathology with a minor in Business Administration. I never really got to work in my profession due to the State of SC would not give me my license because I did not have clinical hours. So, I got discourage and started working odd jobs. In 2018 I decided to get my Master’s in Higher Education in Administration. I received my degree from SNHU in August 2021. I look for jobs at difference universities but taking those jobs would have been a big pay cut. I been working in the healthcare field since 2012 so I said it made sense to get a degree in the healthcare field. I also have a part time at the hospital working as an Monitor Tech.  I hope to gain knowledge in this course to help me further in life. I do not know what to expect in this course so I’m taking it week by week. My profession goal is to land a good paying job in the healthcare field. The healthcare field is so broad so I’m really stilling deciding what route I want to take.