A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE CHALLENGES OF HOSPITALS AS BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS IN NIGERIA

Hospitals are unavoidably seen as bureaucratic organizations because they ensure compliance with bureaucratic policies and procedures in the management of patients’ illhealth through a combination of formal rules. This paper therefore, examined thec hallenges of hospitals as bureaucratic organizations in Nigeria. The specific objectives include identifying the attributes of bureaucracy, examining the hospitals as bureaucratic organizations and bringing to light the effects of bureaucracy on Nigerian hospitals. By employing Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy, the paper utilized secondary sources of data. Meanwhile, the findings revealed among others that the attributes of bureaucratic processes includes impersonality dimension, division of labour, administrative procedures, rules and policies and waiting time among others are manifests in public hospitals as bureaucratic organizations. The paper further revealed that factors such as bureaucratic redtapism, resistant to change, rigid hierarchy, inefficient service delivery and absenteeism among others are the major challenges of bureaucratic processes in the public hospital organizations. The paper therefore, concludes among others that bureaucratic tendencies in the Nigerian healthcare system is preventing the productive ability of the healthcare workers in hospitals and have engendered inflexibility and rigour, as formal rules and regulations in the bureaucratic management of hospitals are too rigid. Therefore, it was recommended that emotional intelligence training should be given to all healthcare workers as it will help in their awareness and management of patients' emotions, no doubt, this will assist health or hospital workers develop right attitude to treatment of patients. Government at all levels should motivate healthcare workers by making the work environment conducive. The paper also recommended that government at all levels should partner with foreign and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in areas of job recruitment and monitoring to improve on the disciplinary measures on healthcare workers.