Human Resources and Organizational Behavior
Human Resources and Organizational Behavior
Understand the HR lifecycle: workforce planning, recruitment, onboarding, performance management, development, retention, and separation. Know legal guardrails-equal employment opportunity, anti-discrimination, harassment prevention, wage-and-hour rules, and labor relations basics-without overreaching into jurisdiction-specific detail.
Organizational behavior: motivation theories (Maslow, Herzberg's two-factor-hygiene vs motivators, expectancy theory, equity theory), team development (Tuckman stages), and conflict resolution (competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, accommodating). Know the difference between engagement, satisfaction, and burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, reduced efficacy).
Change management: Kotter's steps, the ADKAR model, and the reality that resistance is often rational. Recognize the role of culture, communication, and psychological safety in retention and safety.
Traps: confusing hygiene factors with motivators (pay prevents dissatisfaction but does not necessarily motivate); assuming a conflict style is universally best (collaborating is often ideal but not always feasible); treating turnover as purely a compensation problem; picking a disciplinary answer when a systems or communication fix is indicated.
Worked rule of thumb: for a retention problem, diagnose the driver first-use exit and engagement data to separate pay, workload, autonomy, and manager-relationship issues before prescribing an intervention.
Link people strategy to outcomes: staffing ratios, skill mix, and team stability affect quality, safety, and cost.
Population Health and Community Health Management
Population Health and Community Health
Understand population health as the health outcomes of a group plus the distribution of those outcomes. Know the social determinants of health (economic stability, education, neighborhood, food, social context, health care access) and the ecological model of nested influences. Grasp the difference between population health, public health, and community health, and the concept of the triple aim (better care, better health, lower cost) and its extension to equity.
Epidemiology basics: incidence versus prevalence, rates and denominators, risk factors, screening principles (Wilson-Jungner criteria), and levels of prevention-primary, secondary, tertiary. Know herd immunity and the difference between individual and population benefit.
Community assessment: needs assessment, asset mapping, stakeholder engagement, and culturally responsive interventions. Understand care coordination, chronic disease management, and accountable care as population-health strategies.
Traps: confusing incidence (new cases over time) with prevalence (all existing cases); assuming screening always helps (it can cause harm without adequate follow-up); ignoring that interventions must fit the community's culture and resources; confusing individual clinical care with population-level strategy.
Worked rule of thumb: to reduce prevalence of a chronic disease, primary prevention lowers incidence; secondary prevention (screening) finds cases earlier but may not change prevalence much. Choose the level of prevention that matches the goal.
Measure equity: stratify outcomes by group to reveal disparities that aggregate averages hide.