Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay Paper

To Prepare:

Review the national healthcare issue/stressor you examined in your Assignment for Module 1, and review the analysis of the healthcare issue/stressor you selected.
Identify and review two evidence-based scholarly resources that focus on proposed policies/practices to apply to your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Reflect on the feedback you received from your colleagues on your Discussion post regarding competing needs.
The Assignment (4-5 pages):

Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

Add a section to the paper you submitted in Module 1. The new section should address the following:

Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.
Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.
Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations.
Due to the nature of this assignment, your instructor may require more than 7 days to provide you with quality feedback.

Issue/stressor: Resistance of Healthcare worker to covid 19 vaccine

Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

The selected health care issue is the resistance of health care workers to Covid-19 vaccine. Covid-19 pandemic remains the single most significant health care concern over the last two years, whether at the local, state, national or global levels. The pandemic continues to place a strain on health care resources even as new variants of the virus present new challenges and threats. While there have been substantial public health measures undertaken to curtail the spread of the virus, especially with regards to social distancing, handwashing and face masks, these measures are inadequate as the virus continues to spread and strain health care resources (Tartof et al., 2021). The concern about Covid-19 pandemic is heightened in the health care environment where persons with compromised health are present. Although Covid-19 vaccines present an opportunity to reduce the threat from the virus, vaccine uptake resistance among the medical personnel hinders this opportunity. To be more precise, the low Covid-19 vaccination rates among medical personnel at the facility presents a considerable risk factor that must be addressed (Atnafie et al., 2021).

Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting your selected healthcare issue/stressor.

While the development of effective and safe vaccination for Covid-19 could be perceived as a long-term solution and critical step in countering the pandemic, significant vaccination hesitancy and resistance has been observed. There are three main factors that have impacted the issue and are considered competing needs impacting the issue. Firstly, there is a general lack of trust in the vaccine science, especially over fears of possible serious side effects. The rapid speed at which the vaccines have been developed, tested, and approved for public use remains a significant concern with many expressing concerns about the vaccines (products), including the purity of the vaccine ingredients and potential side effects. The undeniable reality is that although the vaccines are shown to be effective with no significant side effects in the short-term, not much is known about their long-term side effects (Latkin et al., 2021).

Secondly, lack of trust in the vaccine manufactures. The pharmaceutical companies that develop and manufacture the vaccines do not have good track records with regards to public trust. In fact, the whole industry is poorly regarded when the only evidence available is presented by them without independent verifications. This poor public perception, at least in the USA, has been due to the ongoing opioid epidemic. In order to earn higher profits, the pharmaceutical industry has consistently failed to warn the public that narcotics are addictive, applied aggressive marketing, downplayed the risks of using narcotics, and exaggerated the benefits of narcotics. These are conclusions drawn from well-documented research studies, showing that the ability of the profit-oriented pharmaceutical companies to develop and distribute effective and safe Covid-19 vaccines cannot be trusted (Latkin et al., 2021).

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Thirdly, lack of trust in the implemented public interventions. Eroded public trust in the government recommended measures to counter the Covid-19 pandemic is clear as many of these measures are fragmented. There is substantial variation in how the local governments have applied these measures. In fact, there have been ambiguous guidelines that same have chosen to follow while others ignored, all having similar results. For instance, some areas applied lockdowns preventing public gatherings while others within their vicinity did not apply them. Even with the measures in place, it would be expected that Covid-19 pandemic would be under control, but that has not been the case. Many of these measures preventing the public from maintaining their social lives and hinder the economies from functioning. These results have diminished confidence in the ability of the government to adequately regulate and oversee the development and testing processes for Covid-19 vaccines. This mistrust has been further heightened by the increasing misinformation through social media and other sources. This has created a situation in which there is low perception of trustworthiness of information concerning Covid-19 from government sources to include federal agencies (Latkin et al., 2021).  Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay Paper

Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.

The health care organization has presented public health guidelines that all medical personnel are expected to follow in order to protect themselves and the patients against contracting and spreading Covid-19. These measures include using face masks, wearing surgical gloves, and handwashing to limit the spread of the virus. The guidelines present response against Covid-19 pandemic by protecting the hospital community, including elderly persons and those with comorbidities, from infection. The measures are based on risk assessments conducted within the hospital facility and availability of resource support. While they have been effective in reducing infection rates through preventing the virus spread through aerosols, droplets and contact, they do not offer 100% protection. This is especially the case when considering the emerging Covid-19 variants that present a considerable public health threat. This makes it clear that while the measures in place are effective, there is still some risks involved and some of that risk could be minimized by encouraging vaccination so that members of the hospital community have an added layer of protection against the virus, and even if they get infection, they would have a high chance of the infection being mild and them recovering speedily and fully (Talic et al., 2021).

Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics.

The practice in the organization focuses on the hospital community practicing social distancing, hand hygiene and wearing disposable face mask. These measures have allowed the organization to continue providing medical services with low transmission of Covid-19. Although the mechanistic basis of how this policy works is clear and widely recommended across the world, the effectiveness of these measures is in question since much of the presented evidence cannot be verified and has reporting bias. In addition, there is a concern that they foster a false sense of security. There is a methodological and logistical challenges in evaluating these practice as large-scale public health interventions, thus making it difficult to collect evidence on their effectiveness. This implies that although there is some scientific basis for the interventions, it is unclear whether they provide significant protective effects. On the other hand, there is a possibility that their benefits could be underestimated. In view that there is imperfect data on the basis, the ethical choice would be to affirm the policy in the interim since doing otherwise would risk putting human lives at risk during this Covid-19 pandemic (Chan, 2020).

Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies.

Even as the policy is implement to continue with the measures already in place (masking, gloves and hand hygiene), there is a need to introduces vaccination and boosters as a measure to protect the hospital community. Scientific evidence reveals that the vaccines are effective and safe in the short-term. This implies that they may not be safe in the long-term. However, the risk that the vaccines may not be effective or safe in the long-term when weighed against the benefits they offer in the short-term shows that they should be affirmed in the interim. To be more precise, while there is no strong scientific evidence against the use of Covid-19 vaccines, and perhaps the evidence for or against may never be available owing to methodological and logical challenges, the ethical choice should favor accepting the vaccines over putting the lives in the hospital community at risk during this Covid-19 pandemic. The vaccine adds a layer of protection against the vaccine that cannot be ignored (Chan, 2020).

References

Atnafie, S. A., Anteneh, D. A., Yimenu, D. K., & Kifle, Z. D. (2021). Assessment of exposure risks to COVID-19 among frontline health care workers in Amhara Region, Ethiopia: A cross-sectional survey. PLoS ONE, 16(4), e0251000. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251000

Chan, T. K. (2020). Universal masking for COVID-19: evidence, ethics and recommendations. BMJ Global Health, 5, e002819. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002819

Latkin, C. A., Dayton, L., Yi, G., Konstantopoulos, A., & Boodram, B. (2021). Trust in a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S.: A social-ecological perspective. Soc. Sci. Med., 270, 113684. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113684

Talic, S., Shah, S., Wild, H., Gasevic, D., Maharaj, A., Ademi, Z., … & Ilic, D. (2021). Effectiveness of public health measures in reducing the incidence of covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and covid-19 mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ, 375, e068302. https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-068302

Tartof, S. Y., Slezak, J. M., Fischer, H., Hong, V., Ackerson, B. K., Ranasinghe, O. N., Frankland, T. B., … & McLaughlin, J. M. (2021). Effectiveness of mRNA BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine up to 6 months in a large integrated health system in the USA: a retrospective cohort study. The Lancet, 398(10309), 1407-1416. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02183-8

Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay Paper