Motivation

1. I expected to learn before class was simply how to better motivate ones employes while acting as manager of the unit. How to motivate them in good times an in bad times. 

2. What I actually learned was the importance of truly getting to know your staff and know the different things that actually motivates each individual. I also learned the different that motivate most employes such as recognition that they are doing a good job. 

3. I will try to get to know the people that I work with better and know the things that motivate them so that we can have a better unit. 

4. I thought the material that was covered was good. Its important as a manger to really get to know your employes so that you don't act like everyone is the same and needs the same thing. And once you do that you should be able to motivate them much better. 

Risk Management and Legal Responsibilities of the Nurse Leader

1. I expected to learn some of the roles of risk management and legal responsibilities in the medical world and how it related to nursing. 

2. I learned that risk management plays the role of trying to help prevent unnecessary negative or harmful events in the healthcare field, wether it was in a hospital or out. I also learned what some of things we can do as nurses to avoid a lot of these problems.

3. In the future I need to be more aware of my surroundings and be aware of potential complications and disasters that could occur. 

4. I think this information is important so that we are all responsible for the work that we do. 

Leaders as Educators/future of nursing

1. I had expected to learn some of the things that are affecting the future of nursing. What some of the good things might be and what some of the bad things might be.

2. What I actually learned was quit I opening. I didn't realize how much of the healthcare industry was made up by nurses. Then I also didn't know how little power and influence nurses actually had. Also how disorganized we are as an organization. 

3. I hope to be able to make a difference in my sphere of nursing as I go throughout my career. Hopefully I can make people more aware of this problem and then together we can make a difference.

4. I think the material was really good and important for all nurses no matter who they are or what kind of nursing they do. We need to spread the word and start making a difference in the medical world.

Quality

1. Going into class I expected to learn how we as nurse managers can make things on our floor better for everyone.

2. What I actually  learned or more so what was confirmed to me was that whats most important when we try to fix things or make them better we actually find out what is the real cause of the problem not just fixing the out ward appearance of things. If we are just trying to fix the burnt toast and trying to make that better we are either doing nothing to make things better or we are only making things worse. And also its also important to remember that just because something may be a little off doesn't mean that we should try to fix it. Most of the times we just end up making things worse when we do that.  

3. I think this material was great and it could be applied to all people in all spheres. Everybody in some sort of leadership or decision making role could benefit from this material. 

4. Now in the future when I see a problem I am going to first ask myself does this problem really need to be fixed or will I just make it worse. And if it does need to be fix what is the true root cause of the problem so we can fix that and not just dress up the burnt toast. 

Strategic Planning

1. What I expected to learn before the class was how we as nurses and managers could better plan our days and schedules and things like that.

2. In the end I learned that there is a whole lot of things that go into a planning session, and that if your not organized and you don't have good planning skills there can be a whole lot of things affected by that.

3. I think that I can utilize this information right now with better planning out my days were I work and that should in turn help me be a better nurse to all of my  patients.

4. I think the material that we cover was really important since we are all involved with planing. Being better at strategically planning things will only help us out in the long run as nurses. 

Budget Interview

1. What is the hardest thing when managing a budget?

2. How do you assess what needs to be covered in your budget?

3. How do you develop a plan for your budget?

4. How do you implement that plan?

5. What is the process of evaluation of your planned budget and its success?

I had the opportunity of interviewing the owner of a small accountant firm. It is just him in the company so his budget planning and keeping is unique in the sense that he has only him to rely upon actually making and keeping that budget.

I first started off by asking him the question of what is the hardest thing when making a budget. He felt that due to the fact that it was only him working in the company that he had to be self disciplined with actually sticking to the budget that he sets out for himself each month. When its only him he has to be extra careful that he is actually sticking to the budget in order for him to not start losing money each month.

I next asked him the question of how does he assess what needs to be covered in his budget. His response to this question was a lot of the basic things like rent, utilities, paper supplies, gas for traveling, phone bills, and things of that nature. And then if he knows ahead of time that something extra or big needs to be bought like maybe a new printer or something like that, then he will plan a couple months in advance for those extra expenditures.

The next question that I asked was how does he develop a plan for his budget. Again a lot of the budget that he makes each month are already built in things that have already been mentioned. But what he will also do is analyze at the end of each month up coming events and situations that should occur and then he plans according to those things. It also greatly depends on the time of the year. During tax season he knows he can be a little bit more flexible with the budget because he will be bringing in much more money than at other times of the year were he needs to be more frugal and careful with his budget.

The fourth question that I asked him was how does he implement his planned budget. Again with him being the only one at his work it really is just up to him in implementing the budget. He makes sure that he has sufficient funds each month to be able to take care of his monthly bills then he tries to make sure that he has a surplus of cash as well in case unexpected things come up so he can cover them.

Finally, the last question that I asked him was what was his process of evaluation of his planned budget and its success. This as well was a pretty basic and easy thing for him to do. Really if he was able to stick to that budget and not go over it he felt it was a success. And if he went over it and it was for unnecessary reasons then he felt it was not successful and he tries to go back and figure out what he can do better in the future.

In the end I thought it was nice to be able to see the perspective of a small business owner that he was the only employee, and the things that he has to deal with instead of a large corporation. I certainly think that there are pros and cons and different things that he has to deal with that the larger companies to have to deal with.

Mock interview

I did my mock interview at the LDS distribution center were they do employment services. It was a really good experience. We had two days of intense training with how to better sell yourself during the interview process. On the second day I had a chance to do a mock interview, and during the interview they taped the interview so that we could go back a see the things that I could do better. The interviewer asked several generic questions that one might ask in an interview, and because of the video I was able to see the things that I did well and things that I did poor. The overall experience was very valuable and a I learned a whole lot of things that I never knew before.

Career development

1. I thought to learn more about staffing issues and hoe to better develop your career.

2. In class I learned about the complications of staffing and how to better staff units. 

3. In the future if I am ever a manager dealing with staffing I will better able to manage the potential problems that I am faced with.

4. I think it is good to learn about staffing and how one can better advance their careers in nursing. I think it's a good thing to do that.

Performance Appraisal Interview

Questions:

• Do you find employee appraisals an effective tool?
• Do you encourage feed back during your employee appraisals? 
• Do you find doing these appraisals once a year sufficient or would you like to do them on a more consistent basis? 
• When telling an employee they have to make changes or improvements, do you give them specific examples on what they need to improve on?
• When giving employees complements on their performances, do you give them specific examples? 

Expectations/ Preparation:

I admittedly did not have a lot of expectations going into the interview other than getting a better point of view and understanding of performance appraisals. I was hoping though to get a better perspective of the appraisals by interviewing someone who doesn't do these appraisals in the health care industry. I was hoping to gain a better understanding if there actually were differences with these or are they just about the same as those done by health care employees. 

So going into the interview I thought of questions that I thought would give me a better insight to these questions and thoughts. Finally I hoped to be able to gain a better opinion on whether these appraisals are really needed or not.  

Interview: 

I interviewed a girl who works for a house cleaning company. She goes around on a periodic basis and evaluates different employees who are doing the house cleanings. She reviews with them what things they need to improve on and also the things that they are doing well. 

• Question 1:  She feels that employee appraisals are very important for her to do. She feels that doing these appraisals helps her to see were they both are at, and to make sure that both her and the employee are on the same page. And then in the end she is able to help out the employee see better the big picture of what the company is wanting to be done. 
• Question 2: She feels that employee feed back is very important for her appraisals so that she can see were an employee is coming from and what they may or may not be thinking in certain instances. 
• Question 3: She feels that once a year is certainly not sufficient enough. She feels that employees need a consistent reminder of expectations and things that are going on in the company. She said that it might be less work for her to just do it once a year, but that the employees would suffer from a lack of feedback from her and the company. 
• Question 4: She feels that it is very important for her to be able to give her employees examples of the things that they are needing to improve upon, so that they can know that she knows what is going on with them. She said that hypothetical examples don't work because when people hear them they think they don't apply to them. Ultimately, when they have specific examples they can know the specific things that they need to improve upon.  
• Question 5: She feels that it is also important that she gives them specific examples of the good things that they are doing so that employee moral can increase, so that they can know that she sees the good things that they do, and also so that they can get rewards and recognition for the good things that they do. 

Outcomes: 

From this I was able to get a better point of view and understanding of the importance of employee appraisals from the things that she was able to talk about and describe from the questions I asked. I thought it was very true what she said about these appraisals with the importance of them being done on a more consistent basis so that everyone could be on the same page. I also like how she said employee feedback was an important thing for her so that she could know and better understand what and were the employees were coming from. She felt that made her a better manager. Finally, I liked how she said that employee appraisals helps the employees see better the big picture of the company and what is expected of them. Often times after a while of no feed back employees can start drifting from the big picture of the company and start doing there own things. Its important that they have this constant feedback of what is expected of them. 

Summary: 

In the end I very much enjoyed doing this interview. It certainly helped give me a different and better perspective of performance appraisals and their importance. It will also help me when I go into my next employee appraisal so that I can take a different approach than I have in the past, and also the importance that I come with my own questions and concerns. 

Ethics

1. I expected to learn before class the importance of ethics in terms of the nursing world and that it can be complicated and not exactly straight forward. 

2. What actually learned was that people have many different points and opinions about different ethical situations. What I might think is a cut and dry situation someone else might think its a very complex and difficult decision. 

3. I will make sure that I am more open with other people and listen to their opinions and points of views on different ethical topics. 

4. I think it was a very good topic because it's important that one creates what he or she feels are their core ethics and values then lives by them. 

Performance Appraisal

1. One do the things I expected to learn before class was what some of things that should be trying to avoid doing to be considered a bad employee or even a difficult employee. I also expected to learn what is the real purpose of performance appraisals. 

2. I learned some of the different leadership responses one should have with different kind of difficult employees such as those that complain, blame, or are lazy. I also learned how to better come away with a better understanding how to use the performance appraisals.

3. The biggest thing that I will use in my practice is to make sure that I am not one of those problem employees and am a good contributer to the team and help the unit be a great unit. I need to reexamine how I am as an employee and if I do any of these stupid things. 

4. I think what was covered in class was really good, it's important to know weather you are being a good employee or not and then how you should respond to the negative employees. 

Team Building

1. Some of the things that I expected to learn before the class were some of the principles behind better team building, how to come together as a team to accomplish the objectives that are set before you, and how to over come obstacles that your team is faced with. 

2. There were many things that I learned from the actual class one being that it is important that you as a team have good communication with the different ideas that the team comes up with. When you put a group of people together and confront them with problems to solve there is always going to be a lot of different ideas. So as the team you have to come together and communicate well to come up with the best plan. Another thing that I learned is that its important to have fun as a team. Don't always take things so serious and enjoy that tasks that you are presented with. 

3. Fun, when you have a floor full of angry or too serious people then I think that work is not as effective. People  should have fun when they work, work is an enjoyable thing, so as a team I hope to help us come together and enjoy what we are doing. 

4. I think this was a very good real life experience that we all got to participate in. We were able to come together and work as a team and unit to accomplish all the tasks that were needed to accomplish. Some needed more thinking and strategies, while others needed a complete joint effort working in tandem to accomplish the tasks. The leasons that we learned in class are very applicable for future work experiences. 

Leadership

1. Some of the things I expected to learn about the topic before class were what are some of the characteristics of a manager and a leader. Why they are important in the nursing world and how they can better lead their fellow nurses and units. 

2. One of the big things that I learned from the unit was that there really is a difference between a leader and a manager. They have different roles and responsibilities. Managers manage time, money, and how things are ran, while leaders are there to inspire and lift up. They are there to make other nurses want to be better nurses and to give better care to their patients. Now even though they may have different roles. I absolutely believe that a manager should be a leader. 

3. I think before this I only looked at the fact that a manager should be a leader and lead his co-workers, but I think it is now very important for me to remember that as a manager there is the whole other side of things that have to be taken care of. Also I don't have to be a manager to be a leader. I can help inspire those who I work with and together we can be a more competent team. 

4. I think the material that we covered is very important. Each unit is like a team or a family, and they need to be lead to be better at what they do each day, and that we all play a part in that. 

Hiring

1. What I expected to learn about this topic before class were what are some of the things one should and should not say during an actual interview. Also some of the types of questions that one might encounter while in an actual interview. 

2. Some of the things that I actually learned in class was why the interviewer might ask specific questions. What are they looking for in terms of responses from us. The importance of playing the "game" in terms of giving them the answers that they are looking for. I also learned the importance of making strong powerful statements about yourself and your past experiences and making them relevant to the situation. 

3. The biggest thing that I will utilize is the idea of making sure that I am prepared for an interview and that I practice questions and responses before an interview making sure I put the companies goals into those responses. 

4. In all I think it was a very helpful and useful class. Even though I currently have a job I will be looking for many more jobs through out the rest of my life, so I have many more interviews to come. The more one prepares himself for an interview the better off that person is, and I think thats exactly what this lesson did for me.