Summary Background.
In 2010, at the renewal of the management team of the UOC (Complex Operational Unit) at Laboratory Medicine of the AULSS 5 Polesana, a survey was conducted about the organizational wellness of the technical team. A climate of general discontent emerged from a questionnaire. The new leadership has adopted a series of managerial strategies, also impacting on operational aspects, capable of modifying this situation. To ensure monitoring of the work and assess if the improved strategies introduced, had changed the perception of organizational wellness by the workers, in 2016 the questionnaire was repeated and the results were analyzed. Furthermore, we want to understand if act on organizational wellness, has also an impact on the productivity of the UOC and on the reduction of the correlated work stress indices.
Methods.
The 2010/2016 questionnaires were compared, composed of 30 questions related to 7 different areas of investigation. In 2010, 20 out of 30 voluntary workers participated to fill out the questionnaire, representing 66% of the total. In 2016, 27 out of 28 workers expressed favorable consent to the completion of the questionnaire, representing 96% of the total. The change strategies introduced were: Proxy/Trust, Mission Statement, Participative Leadership, Transparency Management, Competence Mapping, Field Training, Feedback on the results achieved, Change of organizational model and shifting. To evaluate the effectiveness of the provided analytical performance, it was decided to analyze the TAT (Turn Around Time), i.e. the time elapsed between taking care of the request and the clinical validation of the examination, according to the total volume of required performances and per capita workload. To assess work-related stress, the rate of absenteeism was arranged.
Results.
The analysis of the results of the questionnaire carried out after 6 years highlights the positive effects of the management strategies outlined above: a clear improvement in the satisfaction of workers in the relationship with superiors, leadership and planning, relationship with colleagues, positive indicators, security area. These elements have had a positive quantifiable effect also on the efficiency of the analytical process. Despite the difficulty of objectiveness of the data, the containment of the correlated work stress indices was evaluated in the discussion.
Conclusions.
This study highlighted how, in healthcare, the management of human resources must be considered the true core business of the organization. Improving the organizational wellness translates into an increase in laboratory performance.