Aim: To appreciate the impact of social influences on human behaviour.
Scenario : You are an occupational psychologist who has been asked to improve staff productivity and compliance to legislation in a hospital setting. At this hospital staff do not follow the official code of conduct. Six months ago a very high status manager was employed to ‘fix the problem’. The manager was concerned about the length of time, for instance, it was taking staff to see patients and mindful of the fact that should this pattern continue, the Care Quality Commission may impose special measures against the hospital. To address this immediate concern, the manager stated that staff should not wait for a doctor to sign paperwork before attending to patients. Since then new members of staff have been recruited to ease the workload on staff. The new members of staff are following the actions of previous staff members rather than the code of conduct.
Task: (1) Using your knowledge of social influence, critically explain the behaviour of staff members working at the hospital, making reference to research throughout.
(2) Critically suggest and reflect on guidance (recommendations) to the Hospital Board of Governors on how to improve the situation.
The social influence is the change in human conscious, behaviour, opinion and other psychological aspects under the inspiration of any other individual or group psychological perspective (Robinson, 2012). There are three identified forms of social influence are compliance, internalization and identification. In compliance, social influence occurs when one person agree to the opinion of another individual, In internalization people behave and agree to change under public social influence and identification is the change in behaviour under the influence of any social figure. The impact of social influence on human personality can be major or minor, positive or negative, good or bad depending on the type of influencing factors (Westcott, 2012).
In this study, performing the role of psychologist the learner will identify the impact of social influence on the behaviour of the hospital current staff on the newly recruited staff members and analyse the behaviour of staff under the compliance of legislation to provide suitable recommendations for improvement.
Explaining the behaviour of staff members working at the hospital
The provided case scenario is of a hospital staff not at all following the official code of conduct as well as influencing the new staff to follow their pathway of waywardness and misbehaviour in the organization, that were recruited to ease the workload of the existing staff. The new staff members were an immediate recruitment to have a control over the Care Quality Commission measures against the hospital but the impact appeared to be reverse than expected by administration of the hospital. The major staff of hospital consist, Doctors, Nurses, Technicians, Therapists, IT professionals, the clerical members, pharmacy specialists, janitorial, food service and environmental service staff.
As a psychologist, this report confirms the different misbehaving activities conducted by hospital staff with noncompliance towards the code of conduct as well as the social aspects prompting this human behaviour. The further suitable recommendation provided in the study will help to overcome this unprofessional behaviour of hospital staff.
The staff behaviour is a tool of medical organization to deliver patient satisfaction and medical care with specialized knowledge and skills. All the other resources of the hospital are channelized by staff behaviour that provides structure to hospital image (Cheng et al. 2010). This study was conducted in various wards of the hospital that includes surgical department, radiodiagnosis labs, gynaecological wards, hospital rooms, pharmacy and biological laboratories to analyse the role of all staff members in different sections of the hospital.
The success of any hospital depends on the patient satisfaction and footfall level yet the patient’s are at the lowest level of hospital status hierarchy. The patient’s remain dependent on medical as well as the non-medical staff of the hospital for their basic needs like care, medication, food and cleanliness (Kausler, 2012).
Golden and Earp (2012) stated that Doctor-patient relationship is 19% part of the medical treatment process and rest 82% part is the staff-patient interaction. The physicians interact with patients only once or twice a day and the other staffs interact all round the day with the patient. Therefore, Doctor-patient relationship is dependent on the staff-patient relation. In the present case scenario, the carelessness of nursing staff affected the physician-patient relationship reducing the quality of care for patients in the hospital.
The nursing staff failed to transfer appropriate patient information to Doctor that lead to malfunctioning in care treatment process. One serious case was of a diabetes patient having a low sugar level in the body. The laboratory nursing staff mentioned high sugar level for this patient leading to a prescription of insulin injection from Doctor’s side. The patient went into critical situation due to the high level of insulin in body.
There was a complaint filed by one patient that when he went to nursing station, all the members of staff were busy bidding an auction instead of providing care treatment and, at last, the patient was ignored until the auction ended.
One of the visiting patients, stated that the senior nurses do not looks after the minor issues of patient’s. “One husband asked a senior nurse to take care of his wife having high fever. The nurse purposely rejected the request indicating that checking sick is not her duty”.
Funk et al. (2010) studied the Milgram experiment on obedience in psychology stated that most of the people follow the order of their authoritative individual or group to an extent that their own inner conscious dies. A similar attitude was observed in the newly recruited nursing staff of the hospital. The new nursing staff was identified to follow the misbehaviour of existing staff. The junior nurses were identified to follow the immoral activities like ignoring patient requirements, carelessness towards medical liabilities, no fear of administration and no appreciation for the code of conduct. These activities were developed under the influence of existing staff in the hospital because the attitude was observed only after the continuation of work under the senior nurses.
The other staffs of the biological laboratory, pharmacy, surgical department and radiodiagnosis labs worked in the group where all the junior and senior work together. It was observed that juniors followed the misconduct of existing staff irrespective of their training and knowledge.
Ivers et al. (2012) opine that as per Asch studies the fear of reticulation or though of peculiar let people blindly follow their group activity. This attitude was observed in working scenario of these laboratory staff. The previous staffs were reported with misconducts like providing wrong medication, unhygienic environment, and loss of surgical instruments, loss of laboratory equipment’s as well as chemicals. These are the basic medical practices for which any medical staff in trained in their academic period. But, it was observed that newly arrived staff also followed the similar misconducts of previous staff in the hospital due to fear of being isolation, bullying and discrimination by other staff.
Mackey and Liang (2012) studied the Crutchfield experiment on informational conformity where any individual will follow group guidance due to lack of information. This psychological conformity on social influence can be linked to present scenario of the hospital newly engaged staff. These staffs were recruited in a status of emergency where appropriate training and information regarding the hospital code of conduct was not at all provided to these professionals. Therefore, this lack of information delivery leads to the development of informational conformity in the new staffs that started to follow the misconduct of old staff in the hospital.
Simera et al. (2010) studied the Hofling’s experiment on social influence indicating that people generally develop an unwillingness to question their authority. In the present scenario, the instruction of manager to staff stating not to wait for their doctors for paperwork and just start attending patients was an act against the code of conduct. But, the nursing staff aware of the fact simply followed the authority instruction without any question. This behaviour indicated chnages on the social influence towards the authoritative instruction of the superior.
The above study on misconduct created by existing hospital staffs as well as their social influence on newly engaged staffs indicated that the authoritative and group influence of existing staff has changed the human behaviour of new staff leading to the development of misconduct in their practice. There is a lack of appropriate training of new staff leading to their lack of knowledge about proper hospital code of conduct as well as practices to be followed by a medical staff. This lack of proper knowledge easily processed the social influence of existing staffs on the newly engaged staff.
Suggesting and reflecting on guidance (recommendations) to the Hospital Board of Governors on how to improve the situation
As per knowledge and understanding of issues arising in the current situation of the hospital the below-described guidance would be effective enough to have a neutral control over these circumstances.
As per the code of conduct for healthcare professionals, the organization gets a guarantee of high standard care assurance in the hospital. The individuals in hospitals should be trained as per seven described scenario in code of conduct before recruiting them as health care professionals (Baumeister and Bushman, 2010).
The seven scenarios in code of conduct are: –
The professional is responsible for making sure that they reply for their actions
Promote and uphold the confidentiality, enormity, health, rights and wellbeing of people using health care services
Any healthcare professional should work in collaboration with other professionals in organization for wellbeing of care users
Adopt effectively and open communication process with care users
Make sure to respect any individual right to privacy
Completely adopt the process of continuing professional development for improvement in your care quality standards
Uphold and promote uniformity, multiplicity and annexation (Carver and Scheier, 2012)
The administration should implement certain laws and policies mentioned by the government of the country to ensure better quality and care services in their hospital-working scenario to have a control over on-going misbehaviour. Some of the most effective laws and policies are described below: –
Confidentiality policy 2014
Care standards Act 2000
Health Act 2009
Health Authorities Act 1995
Health and Social Care Act 2012
Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Act 1997
Patient Rights Act 2011 (Kausler, 2012)
The hospital administration should develop a system for alerting staff for potential risks occurring due to their misbehaviour and negligence. Further, if there are no signs of improvement than a legal action should be initiated for the offence created by the staff member (Shove, 2010).
The above case study of changes in human behaviour created by social influence indicates that at the professional level as well social influence can initiate a positive or negative impression on human conscious. In the present hospital situation, immediate actions of implementing laws and policies, training the professionals and making disciplined procedures of offensive activities by staff should be taken by the administration to have a control over on-going negative social influence on the staff of the hospital.
Books
Baumeister, R.F. and Bushman, B., (2010). Social psychology and human nature, brief version. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Carver, C.S. and Scheier, M.F., (2012). Attention and self-regulation: A control-theory approach to human behavior. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media.
Kausler, D.H., (2012). Experimental psychology, cognition, and human aging. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media.
Robinson, L., (2012). Psychology for social workers: Black perspectives on human development and behaviour. London: Routledge.
Westcott, M.R., (2012). The psychology of human freedom: A human science perspective and critique. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media.
Journals
Cheng, J.T., Tracy, J.L. and Henrich, J., (2010). Pride, personality, and the evolutionary foundations of human social status. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31(5), pp.334-347.
Funk, S., Salathe, M. and Jansen, V.A., (2010). Modelling the influence of human behaviour on the spread of infectious diseases: a review. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 7(50), pp.1247-1256.
Golden, S.D. and Earp, J.A.L., (2012) Social ecological approaches to individuals and their contexts twenty years of health education & behavior health promotion interventions. Health Education & Behavior, 39(3), pp.364-372.
Ivers, N., Jamtvedt, G., Flottorp, S., Young, J.M., Odgaard-Jensen, J., French, S.D.,
Mackey, T.K. and Liang, B.A., (2012). Combating healthcare corruption and fraud with improved global health governance. BMC international health and human rights, 12(1), pp.1.
Shove, E., (2010). Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change. Environment and planning A, 42(6), pp.1273-1285.
Simera, I., Moher, D., Hoey, J., Schulz, K.F. and Altman, D.G., (2010). A catalogue of reporting guidelines for health research. European journal of clinical investigation, 40(1), pp.35-53.
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