A dialogic organizational development approach in end-of-life communication of a veterinary hospital: Vets in Practice Philippines

• Main Authors: Joson, Paula Rae S., Que, Maria Briana C., Raymundo, Ramona Margarita R.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2019
• Subjects: Veterinarians
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/8618
• Institution: De La Salle University

In this paper, the dialogic organizational development approach of Bushe and Marshak (2015) will be used in the context of end-of-life (EOL) communication od a veterinary hospital: Vets in Practice Philippines (VIP). VIP communicates EOL to pet owners consistently in three ways: who will communicate EOL, how to communicate EOL, and what will be communicated. The thesis is a mini-OD project using the dialogic OD approach to facilitate organizational discussions with members of VIP in order to reach a consensus on EOL communication. The method of the mini-OD project is divided into four phases aligned with dialogic OD approach. A series of semi structured interviews and unstructured interviews revealed that organizational members have multiple interpretations on who can communicate EOL, the manner and approach during EOL communication, and the content of the EOL messages. Through facilitating focus group discussions, organizational members reached a consensus to retain 10 themes out of the 14 themes that emerged. The organizational members reached a consensus to retain the themes: (1) veterinarians and veterinary nurses/technicians can communicate EOL (2) timplahin/basahin (3) do it slowly (4) be confident (5) be serious (6) know your timing (7) uplift the clients (8) apologize to the clients (9) sympathize with the clients/makiramay (10) conceal certain information from the clients.