The link between the management of employees and patient mortality in acute hospitals

Abstract

The relationship between human resource management practices and organizational performance (including quality of care in health-care organizations) is an important topic in the organizational sciences but little research has been conducted examining this relationship in hospital settings. Human resource (HR) directors from sixtyone acute hospitals in England (Hospital Trusts) completed questionnaires or interviews exploring HR practices and procedures. The interviews probed for information about the extensiveness and sophistication of appraisal for employees, the extent and sophistication of training for employees and the percentage of staff working in teams. Data on patient mortality were also gathered. The ndings revealed strong associations between HR practices and patient mortality generally. The extent and sophistication of appraisal in the hospitals was particularly strongly related, but there were links too with the sophistication of training for staff, and also with the percentages of staff working in teams.

Teamworking under Lean in UK public services: lean teams and team targets in Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC)

“…Thus in the area of health services, for example, we have seen the development of teams in areas such as surgical operations (Finn, 2008), genetic services (Finn et al, 2010) and community mental health services (Onyett, 2011). Other work has pointed to the link between teamworking and various measures of organizational performance (West et al, 2002) There has been some questioning of what is understood by 'team' or 'teamworking' in these circumstances, and this has been accompanied by calls for much greater clarity in definition (West and Lyubovnikova, 2013). West (2012: 14-15) has argued that around 50% of staff in the UK health service are working in 'pseudo teams': these are the staff who respond this as 'pseudo-teamworking', however, they focussed on how teamworking could be understood through placing greater emphasis on the idea of interdependence between team members.…”

A systems ergonomics analysis of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells infection outbreaks

“…Zohar, 2000). Within health care specifically, West et al (2002) carried out a largescale survey of the relationship between HRM practices and general in-hospital mortality. The survey showed some aspect of high involvement HRM were associated with lower mortality rates after adjustment for patient and hospital characteristics.…”

The effect of human resource management high performance work practices on organisational outcomes: a Sri Lankan perspective

“…To some extent this is the result of a lack of consensus in terms of what constitutes HRM practices, HPWPs and effective performance criteria as well as appropriate measures of each of these (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2005). While Pfeffer and others, as noted above, have claimed that HPWPs positively influence organisational performance, that more HPWPs leads to improved outcomes (Guest et al, 2000;Gould-Williams and Mohamed, 2010;Marchington and Grugulis, 2000) and that certain practices are more effective than others (West et al, 2002), there are contradictory studies that indicate an absence of evidence linking HPWPs in HRM to improved organisational performance (Guest et al, 2003). The findings are further complicated by the influence of contingent and contextual factors within organisations so that relationships evident in some may not be applicable to others (Browning, Edgar, Gray and Garrett, 2009).…”

“…More recent literature is inclined to advocate multiple practices in configurational bundles, however the composition of the bundles varies between studies (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2005). The most common practices linked to HPWPs are recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management and teamwork (Browning et al, 2009;West et al, 2002;Kroon, Van De Voorde and Timmers, 2013;Gould-Williams and Mohamed, 2010) although information-sharing (Bruce, 2013;Kuvaas and Dysvik, 2010), employee empowerment (Kuvaas and Dysvik, 2010) and compensation (Bosalie et al, 2005;Boxall and Macky, 2009;Bruce, 2013) are also considered, but to a lesser extent. Of greater significance than which specific practices constitute the HPWP offering is the impact that they will have upon employees" behaviour and attitudes as these are the determinants of the extent to which they can influence performance outcomes (Park et al, 2003).…”