Creativity and Innovation
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- Recently, I worked as a Unit secretary in healthcare. During our regular group meetings, a colleague told us that one of our patients is refusing the suggested care without any justified basis for her decision. The 85-year old woman was living alone in her apartment. However, the property owner and a relative were concerned with her health and therefore contacted us for a medical evaluation. The patient refused a full medical check but only agreed to a limited health evaluation. She had a mindset that once her health problem becomes public she would become a burden to her physician.
I suggested a participative ethical decision-making model, which my colleagues accepted. On one hand, I told my colleagues that we could not force her hospitalization since that would only disorient and frighten her. On the other hand, according to the nursing ethical principle, we could not leave her to the course of life she was leading.
I suggested that we appoint a psychologist consultant first to establish trust with the patient. After that, the consultant would help the woman overcome her psychological distress. This would lead the patient to re-establish her values in life. My creative and innovative idea offered a solution because, after regular consultations, the psychologist was able to explain to the patient the risk of her health problem. As a team, we demonstrated some basic safety precautions and the patient finally agreed to have full health evaluation.
- Lack of support is the most common impediment to creativity and sometimes the hardest impediment to overcome. One might have creative ideas but have it wither on the vine. A great and innovative idea might gradually go into waste primarily because no one does anything to support it. The idea might be original and interesting but other people fail to listen or consider it.
- From the TED talk this week, it was interesting for me to learn that organizations can translate new ideas into products and services, which can lead to tremendous success. Simply, diversity makes organizations more innovative. The aspects of diversity include gender and age. However, diversity will only work if the leadership styles allow people to speak freely, and be creative and innovative. Concerning gender diversity, at least 20% of leadership positions in organizations should be women. Summed up, diversity leads to innovativeness and innovativeness leads to diversity in organizations.