Case Study: Develop a Motivation Plan

Jane Couch is the director of nursing for a 400-bed nonprofit hospital in the Southwest. Susan Smith joined the hospital as a staff nurse three years ago after relocating from the northeast. She is 30 years old and has been a staff nurse since graduating from a two-year college nursing program 10 years ago. She is married to a lawyer, and they have two children, ages 6 and 8.

The hospital's inpatient census has been extremely high because of another hospital's closing. The tension on the nursing floors has been running pretty high because of time pressures to discharge patient's early, lack of professional staff, and an upcoming accreditation visit from The Joint Commission. Because of time restraints, Jane was unable to complete the staff's annual performance evaluations. However, all nurses received a 5 percent pay increase. With this increase, the hospital staff is now the highest paid as compared with other hospitals within the region. Jane believes the higher pay compensates the nursing staff for their increased workload and related stress levels.

Until recently, Jane had been pleased with Susan's performance. Susan had demonstrated her willingness to work hard and had made very few, if any, patient-care errors. However, over the past three months, Jane has noticed that Susan is not performing at her same productivity level and appears to argue frequently with the treating physicians and other nurses about the patients' treatment plans. Jane frequently hears Susan complaining that "no one listens to me," "no one wants to hear my opinion," and "they don't pay me enough to do this job."

Susan was once a highly motivated, productive member of the nursing staff. Jane understands that

Everyone is experiencing more stress than usual because of the increased workload, but what can be done to motivate Susan to her prior self?

Within the principles of the content theories of Maslow, Herzberg, and Alderfer, explain to the director of nursing why Susan is behaving the way she has over the past three months.

First read Case Study 5-6 in the attached above pictures, Develop a Motivation Plan

Within the principles of the content theories of Maslow, Herzberg, and Alderfer, address the following in a paper:

1. Explain why Susan has been behaving the way she has over the past three months.

2. Offer three specific recommendations to address the problem.

Your well-written paper should meet the following requirements:

• Be 3-4 pages in length, not including the required cover and reference pages
• Formatted according to APA writing guidelines
• Provide support for your statements with in-text citations from a minimum of three scholarly articles from peer-reviewed journal articles.