Departmental Strength and Growth

This assignment requires you to imagine you are a lead sonographer/radiographer or other medical imaging technologist in a busy medical imaging department.  After reading chapter 9 in “Leadership for Healthcare Professionals”, review the list of the 5-step approach to strategy analysis on page 218.

Objectively and carefully evaluate your medical imaging department under the process outlined in this list, and discuss the following:

1. Identification of present resources (employees, equipment, patients, etc.)
2. Identify other strengths
3. Combine strengths and resources in new ways to maximize effectiveness and capabilities (What is possible?)
4. Investigate whether continuing education is being employed to improve departmental performance.
5. Identify continuing education opportunities that may provide departmental and technologist growth.
6. Evaluate the changes these combinations may produce
7. Identify how this strategy serves the department and the facility’s mission as a whole
8. Identify resource gaps or areas needing improvement that may affect abilities to make these changes
   1. Evaluate the 5 why’s of each issue to get you to the root of the problem (Identify the problem, ask why it is a problem, expand by asking why that is the case, etc, until you get to 5 whys which should be near the root of the issue)
   2. Identify how these issues may be addressed by a person in your position
9. Summarize

This should be completed   a 1-2-page essay with your name, course and date appearing on a title page (APA).  It should be written in paragraph form adhering to all college level writing conventions.  This assignment will require you to be realistic and creative.  Focus on your “why” for being in the medical profession to help you envision a department that serves our patients well and keeps employees involved, content and able to remember their own “why” for entering the profession.  You would not need to be a manager or administrator to complete this process.  It is something any thoughtful technologist or lead technologist could complete and bring to management.

A five-step approach to strategy analysis in this paradigm follows:

1. Identify and classify resources
2. Combine strength and turn them into capabilities
3. Appraise the profit (margin, for non-profit organizations) potential of capabilities
4. Select the strategy best serves the organization given the Marco and micro external environmental factors
5. Identify resource gaps and invest in weakness

CRNNENC 5Whys video – YouTube