Deck 3: The Nature of Supervision: Health Care and Everywhere

Question 1

One's success as a supervisor is largely determined by the possession of a natural talent for managing people.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

To suggest that most management positions are eventually filled by those who are not capable of doing a proper job is a re-statement of The Peter Principle.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

It is likely that more than half of the duties of the average first-line manager are non-supervisory in nature.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Executive management of a hospital or other health facility bears the ultimate responsibility as guardians of the organization's resources.

Question 5

It is the first-line manager who is required to make most of the hour-to-hour and moment-to-moment operating decisions affecting departmental operations.

Question 6

The first-line supervisor must be considerably more proficient in management than in some specific functional specialty.

Question 7

It is fortunate that management as an occupation in its own right is as well defined as most working healthcare specialties.

Question 8

The management generalist is largely concerned with activities that are common to most situations in which someone must direct the work of others.

Question 9

Most people who eventually become first-line managers enter their occupational specialties sufficiently well trained to do the jobs for which they have been hired.

Question 10

Most first-line supervisors who fall into the "working trap" do so because most of the department's employees are unable to perform any tasks that lie beyond the scope of their day-to-day duties.

Question 11

The responsibilities of the management of a healthcare facility include:

A) Responsibility to the community for determining how best to meet current healthcare needs.
B) Determining what other facilities in the local area are likely to do over the long run.
C) Designating an external entity to function as primary guardian of the organization's resources.
D) Maintaining detailed knowledge of the compensation and benefits structure of competing organizations.

Question 12

The simplest, most all encompassing description or definition of management and thus the role first-line supervisor is: Within that phrase-getting things done through people-is not only descriptive of the role of the first-line supervisor, it is also the simplest, most all-encompassing definition of management

A) Providing the organization's products or services to its customers or clients.
B) Handling all business-related problems and situations as they arise.
C) Getting things done through people.
D) None of the above.

Question 13

Success as a supervisor comes primarily through:

A) Dedicating oneself to hard work and long hours.
B) Establishing the proper working relationship with one's immediate manager.
C) Continually acquiring additional education in the techniques of management.
D) Conscientious effort and a reasonable liking for the work.

Question 14

The style one develops as a healthcare supervisor is likely to be influenced by:

A) The extent to which technical and professional employees work in the same department as entry-level workers.
B) The extent of variability of the department's work.
C) The geographic mobility of the department's employees.
D) All of the above.

Question 15

The "anyone can do it" attitude toward management often encountered in people of differing interests and backgrounds is most likely owing largely to:

A) The possession by the perceiver of an inherent talent for management.
B) The general lack of recognition of management as an occupation in its own right.
C) The fact that management requires no special knowledge beyond that which most workers already possess.
D) None of the above.

Question 16

Generally, the ________ the organization or department, the more likely is the supervisor to be both worker and manager.

Question 17

It is the responsibility of the entire collective known as "management" to direct all the activities that are necessary in pursuit of the ______ of the organization.

Question 18

Exceptional ability for doing manual, technical, or professional work does not guarantee of the presence of ________ for supervision in a health care organization.

Question 19

Management as a separate field in its own right defies the kind of __________ applied to working specialties.

Question 20

In health care, more so than in most other endeavors, there is an immediate focus on the customer and some immediate ________ considerations.