Effective Decision Making in Healthcare Organizations (Health, Medicine, Nursing Research Paper)

Effective Decision Making in Healthcare Organizations
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Effective Decision Making in Healthcare Organizations
Introduction
Among the critical roles of leadership in health, the organization makes effective and ethical decisions that present solutions to daily problems. These decisions are vital because they impact the organization's operations, employees, and stakeholders, including patients and their families. Because health outcomes are probabilistic, leadership decisions are often made under uncertain conditions (source). By definition, effective decision making is a systemic process through which alternatives are selected and eliminated to arrive at those that promise the most favorable outcomes. Therefore, the uncertain nature of effective decision making requires leaders to have access to relevant information such as data (Capobianco, 2019) and evidence (Majers & Warshawsky, 2020) and to be guided by ethics (ACHE, 2016) and organizational and industrial guidelines.
Importance of Sound Decision Making in Healthcare
The application of evidence and data in effective decision making is vital because it seeks to reduce the errors made in clinical processes. Evidence and data are essential in this aspect because they help leaders make informed decisions. Healthcare organizations are large and contemporary organizations whose performance depends on resources, skills, knowledge, and human resources' incentives. Healthcare organizations' complex nature emerges from the organizational structure, human resources, nature of work, context, and leadership (Ghiasipour, Mosadeghrad, Arab, & Jaafaripooyan, 2017). Therefore, any decision made by leadership may significantly impact the organization's performance and reputation.
Studies show that most health organizations' problems are poor communication and leadership (Weberg, 2012; Vaghee & Yavari, 2013). The basis for these problems is poor or uninformed decision-making by health organization leadership, which can result in increased operating costs, reduced effectiveness and efficiency, dissatisfaction among the staff, and ultimately, lower patient satisfaction. When patients lose confidence in a health organization, they become irrelevant because they will seek better alternatives. Where there are no alternatives, the overall health outcomes of the affected community deteriorate. These consequences highlight how leadership's important to sound decision-making is because it can determine the balance between life and death.
Evidence-Based Decision Making (EBDM)
EBDM is a decision-making process that relies on readily available research evidence. Experiential outcomes inform the process following vigorous studies, experiments, and hypothesis tests on the relevant phenomena or study questions backed by scientific findings, which may be considered facts. The application of evidence forms the basis for informing policies, procedures, practices, or programs within a healthcare organization. Therefore, organizational evidence-based decision making is a culture of inquiry that lays the foundation for applying evidence to inform...