What matters most and for whom? A cross-sectional study exploring goals of health professionals in German neonatal intensive care units

Anne Mensen, Bernhard Roth, Ludwig Kuntz, Michael Wittland, Verena Glöckner and Felix Miedaner

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2021, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-8

Abstract: Quality of care largely depends on successful teamwork, which in turn needs effective communication between health professionals. To communicate successfully in a team, health professionals need to strive for the same goals. However, it has been left largely unaddressed which goals professionals consider to be important. In this study, we aim to identify these goals and analyse whether differences between (1) personal and organisational goals, (2) different professions and (3) hierarchical levels exist in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Goals were identified based on a literature review and a workshop with health professionals and tested in a pilot study. Subsequently, in the main study, a cross-sectional employee survey was undertaken. 1489 nurses and 537 physicians from 66 German NICUs completed the questionnaire regarding personal and organisational goal importance between May and July 2013. Answers were given based on a 7-point Likert scale varying between none and exceptionally high importance. Results show that the goals can be subdivided into three main goal dimensions: patients, parents and staff. Furthermore, our results reveal significant differences between different professions and different hierarchical level: physicians rated patient goals with a mean (95% CI) importance of 6.37 (6.32 to 6.43), which is significantly higher than nurses with a mean (95% CI) importance of 6.15 (6.12 to 6.19) (p<0.01). Otherwise, nurses classified parental goals as more important (p<0.01). Furthermore, professionals in leading positions rate patient goals significantly higher than professionals that are not in leading positions (6.36 (6.28 to 6.44) vs 6.19 (6.15 to 6.22), p<0.01). Different employee goals need to be considered in decision-making processes to enhance employee motivation and the effectiveness of teamwork. DRKS00004589.

Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/290418/1/M ... hat-matters-most.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:290418

DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-044031

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().