Week5Assignment Culture of Excellence

Week5Assignment Culture of Excellence

Leading a Culture of Excellence Paper

A healthcare environment that leads a culture of excellence (CoE) is essential for high-

quality and safe care delivery and improvement of patient health outcomes and experiences

(Smith & Plunkett, 2019). An organizational mission, vision, as well as values, shape the

organizational culture. The mission defines the uniqueness and purpose of the organization, the

vision describes the future, and values define the expected behaviors from people within the

organization (Bass, 2019). This paper focuses on leading a CoE in healthcare. Sections include

CoE, mission, vision, and values, leading a CoE, and conclusion.

Culture of Excellence

As defined by Cronshaw et al. (2021), excellence in healthcare is the measure to which

an organization can offer a standard of high-quality care, achieve patient and other stakeholder

experience and satisfaction, and maintain high performance and productivity. Organizational

culture defines the behavioral patterns including customs, actions, values, language,

communication, institutions, and beliefs that guide the healthcare system’s operations (Smith &

Plunkett, 2019). The culture guides the establishment of provider-patient connections, staff, and

patient engagement, effective care coordination and collaboration, effective communication, and

healthy work environments (HWEs) that contribute to achieving excellence in service delivery.

In turn, reaching excellence promote a culture that empowers the staff and patients to work in

collaboration to realize the organization's mission and vision (Bass, 2019).

The characteristics of a CoE are a shared organizational vision, resilience to challenges

and changes, and team collaboration (Cronshaw et al., 2021). A CoE is depicted when all

organizational employees work towards a common vision. The staff has a clear understanding of

their roles and responsibilities and other contributions to achieving the shared vision. The leader

communicates the vision to the staff and ensures everyone moves towards achieving common

goals and ultimately, the vision (Provance et al., 2022). In a CoE, employees have high levels of

resilience, which enable them to remain flexible and easily adapt to changes, uncertainties, and

challenges without being distracted or losing focus on the shared goals and vision (Smith &

Plunkett, 2019). This motivation towards success, leadership support, as well as role and purpose

clarity enables them to overcome any challenges and difficulties they encounter. Team

collaboration is a key feature of CoE. The employees and teams work together to achieve

common goals, objectives, missions, and vision. Team collaboration nurtures effective

communication, mutual trust and respect, and role clarity, which are fundamental to achieving

excellence in care delivery, including improved patient outcomes, safety, efficiency, and patient

satisfaction (Cosme et al., 2021).

A CoE is important to the executive leadership track as it facilitates effective leadership

characterized by team collaboration, patient and staff engagement, staff resilience to challenges,

and HWEs, all of which contribute goal, mission, and vision accomplishment (Smith & Plunkett,

2019). Nurse leaders will practice transformational leadership strategies to create a CoE and

thus, achieve high-quality and safe care for all patients across their lifespan, leading to improve

patient outcomes. By nurturing HWEs, free of incivility behaviors such as bullying and abuse, a

CoE helps improve nurse leaders to improve working conditions, and ultimately, the nurses’

mental, and physical wellness, preventing and reducing burnout and thus, excellent service

delivery (Cronshaw et al., 2021).

Mission, Vision, Values

The selected healthcare organization is the Cleveland Clinic, a non-profit multi-specialty

academic center that incorporates hospital and clinical care with education and research