Question

You are an administrator who works with both medical and non-medical staff in an in-patient facility. Over the past six months, the behavior of a colleague you have known for 10 years has changed. The colleague has:

- Become somewhat unreliable

- Showing up late for meetings

- Undergone personality changes

- Lacked attention to detail

- Lacked judgment in some situations

-Responded negatively to colleagues who have attempted to intervene

What would you do in this situation?

Answer 1

I would do the following in the above situation:

• Would first set up a meeting with him in person to discuss the matter. In case he co-operates, I shall go ahead with the colleague else, I shall appoint a counselor to look into the matter.
• We shall try to know if there are issues that is concerning him on his personal front and whether his behavior in the office an effect on the same.
• We shall also try to figure out if there is something at the work place that is bothering the employee and to what extent is its impact.
• Undergoing the personality changes is rather a grave matter of concern, especially if it goes on a negative front. For this, it is extremely necessary that proper counseling session is established with the employee to analyze the causes in-depth.
• Make the necessary changes in the system that could possibly help the employee to cope with the issues in a congenial way, to the extent possible.
• If it is concluded during the session that the employee’s change was rather gradual and that we, as administrator or Health care staff failed to notice on time, then the only way to deal with the situation would be to first, give the employee a warning to improve the behavior and second, to terminate the employee if nothing works out to improve him or if he completely fails to co-operate or open up because in the latter case, the health care sector, being already a sensitive one, dealing with such an impossible staff shall only pose a grave threat to the patients and colleagues alike.