Group Points, Coursework Example

Several collaborative issues were raised in the film Salud that are critical to our understanding of how public health officials work with one another in order to effectively make decisions and implement those decisions in producing quality health care. Within the film, clear examples of breakdown came from Venezuela where protestors argued that the Cuban healthcare providers took away opportunity for Venezuelan medical professionals to perform the same jobs. In this example, Vroom’s adaptation of Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Taxonomy (Vroom, 2000) showcases a clear breakdown in collaboration through the consulting phase. While the Cuban medical professionals clearly consulted each other on making the decision to enter Venezuela to help provide medical care, they did not effectively consult Venezuelan officials or public health providers on doing so. Furthermore, the poorest regions in Cuba are historically the most prone to not receiving the necessary type and quality of medical care. However, by understanding the community outreach methods outlined by Salem, Hooberman & Ramirez (2005), these communities and public health officials seeking to improve these regions can work together to develop similar coalition and communal movements that can educate these individuals on quality personal hygiene, discussion of at-home medical care and raise better awareness to public health professionals that more resources and financial support are necessary to improve these areas.

The best possible collaborative steps that we can include within our group are effectively utilizing communication and overall decision-making models to improve our work together. In the Cuban movement, each individual in the public health system performs a specific job but it is up to the overall leadership of the system to provide proper direction, communication and education of policies, procedures, tasks and requirements to the other sub-parts. Similarly, I believe our group can take a lesson from this in establishing strong leadership within the group, maintaining an organized action plan and list of deliverables through our work processing, and maintaining overall communication levels that are both efficient and effective. By achieving these simple collaborative steps, our group will be able to drastically improve overall quality of work and production without adding more work for individuals or suffering from the failures of miscommunication.

Bibliography

Salem, E., Hooberman, J., & Ramirez, D. (2005). Mapp in chicago: A model for public health systems development and community building. Journal of Public Health Management Practice, 11(5), 393-400.

Vroom, V. H. (2000). Leadership and the decision-making process. Organizational Dynamics, 28(4), 82-94.