Question:
Discuss about developing a mission, vision, goal and objective for the project?
Answer:
The management has instructed me to decrease the size of my staff because they are doing cutbacks. Cutbacks are usually done in the process to increase the profits and it seems to be the intention here as well. But it seems that the management wants to increase their profit by reducing the number of staff nurses working in the hospital. Every project has some kind of problem which they are trying to address but mostly people fail to define the problem itself which is a big mistake. Look in this situation the management has defined the problem in terms of the solution. The actual problem here is that the hospital is not being able to make profits that it intent to make. There may be several reason as to why the hospital is not going in profit like the doctors are not good, the facilities are not good, there is lack of hygiene and patients are not comfortable to that or the charges are too high and the patients cannot afford them. But here the management has described the problem in terms of the staff nurses implying that it is because of the nurses that the hospital is not making profit and if we reduce their number the problem will be solved and the hospital will start making profit, which is not true. The hospitals main duty is to provide the best healthcare services to its patients. The changes that could be done to increase the profit may be like improving the quality of care, efficient teamwork, patientcentered care or maybe reduce the cost of treatment.
As a nurse leader of the project team, it is my duty to develop a problem statement keeping quality healthcare services as a priority with it ensuring that is acceptable to everyone, which includes the staff nurses and the management. To develop a problem statement it is extremely important to determine the vision and the mission of the project before defining a problem statement. The vision is the objective that we are trying to achieve. In this case, the vision is to make the hospital into a profit making institution. While determining the mission, it is important to understand for whom we are going to solve the problem and what are we going to do to solve the problem. Here, the mission is to increase the profits of the hospital. The target audience (for whom it is for) is the management. The mission is to achieve the vision.
So, the problem statement can be described as “The hospital is not making enough profit”.
To address the problem, some goals and objectives must be set. Objectives are more specific than the mission of the project and it also defines the results that must be achieved. It set a target which must be achieved and against whom we can measure our progress. The objectives should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-limited. For this project the objective can be to increase the profit to a certain amount in a specified period of time.
Once, we have identified the problem and come up with a problem statement and backed it up with the mission and vision to achieve our objective, now we can approach the management with the issue and get their confirmation by asking open-ended questions. If there are some concerns, they should be addressed and changes done accordingly.
References
- Chris (2009, March 18), How to write a problem statement [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.ceptara.com/blog/how-to-write-problem-statement
- Swann, S (2011, October 13), Writing a problem statement [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://thinkinghow.com/writing-a-problem-statement/
- Competencies, Reviewed from qsen.org
- Developing a mission, vision, goals and objectives for the project, Fundamentals of project management, 2006
- Sagor, R (2000), Writing a problem statement, Guiding school improvement through action research
- Polite, D & Beck, C 2004, Nursing research: principles and methods, Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, pp 73-75
