Are Nursing Cooperation Systems: Are Nursing Leaders The Answer?

In today’s healthcare system, effective leadership is essential to improving and reaching organizational outcomes. A leader is someone with the ability to influence others but, an effective leader uses positive strategies to inspire employees to work towards the same goal. Leadership in nursing requires a constant effort to motivate others to become part of the organizational transformation. This can be achieved using a transformational leadership style with a focus on communication, motivation, and empowerment.

Nursing leaders are crucial to any nursing organization. They motivate, empower, influence, and communicate the organization’s vision to create change within the organization. Great nursing leadership depends on great nursing leaders. This paper will define nursing leadership and describe leadership characteristics. It will further depict the democratic style and transformational theory of nursing leadership. While exploring leadership in action, this paper will illustrate the aspects of nursing.

Slide 1: The expectations of nurses today are higher than ever with goals such as achieving top percentiles in nursing and patient satisfaction, to being among the top leaders in quality outcomes, and to build productive work relationships and environments. Nursing leaders serve as the primary link between staff, physicians, and the community. They are expected to be innovative, highly skilled, possess a certain degree of nursing knowledge, and produce qualified individuals to care for the growing population. According to Lorber, Treven, and Mumel (2016) “nursing leadership is pivotal because nurses represent the most extensive discipline in health care”. Because of this growing need for diversity in leadership and my background in the military, I decided to focus on the MSN Executive Track at Chamberlain College of Nursing.

Nurse leaders are the background to the nursing care. Effective nurse leaders can promote a positive workforce and a healthy work place for other nurses. Workplace dynamics is an essential part of how each nurse functions. Nurses, being mentally and physically stressed, need to have support and guidance from a nurse leader to feel confident about performance. The impact of nursing leaders can be a positive and guiding force for the younger or more inexperienced nurse. Having strong relationships with solid leaders can instill values in the beginning stages of a newer nurses’ career. Gaining insight and core concepts from a more experienced leader can make a world of difference in the way a new nurse performs, provides patient care, and sets future goals for themselves. A newer nurse with a positive role model and nurse leader can model themselves to become a leader for future nurses.

In healthcare it is very important to have strong leaders, especially in the nursing profession. A nurse leader typically uses several styles of leadership depending on the situation presented; this is known as situational leadership. It is important that the professional nurse choose the right style of leadership for any given situation to ensure their employees are performing at their highest potential. Depending on which leadership style a nurse leader uses, it can affect staff retention and the morale of the employees as well as nurse job satisfaction (Azaare & Gross, 2011.) “Nursing leaders have the responsibility to create and maintain a work environment which not only promotes positive patient outcomes but also

Effective nurse leaders are often flexible and are able to change style of leadership to suit changing circumstances. They ensure that their people are regularly being challenged to grow and learn. Nurses show leadership by giving feedback and empowering others to bring out their best and the opportunity to grow. I believe that good leaders help people to see that what they do makes a difference. Nurse further their education to expand and gain knowledge so they can render excellent quality care that patients deserve. Also, the leaders would also help other nurses to work as a team to help the facility run to deliver high-quality care. A leader, “should think and talk about future trends that will affect the team's work, and make sure you communicate your vision to your team regularly” (Pearce, 2007, p. 25). I vision a leader as someone who can move others in achieving their goals and mission. For instance, our nurse supervisor addresses the

Not all nurses go into the profession with leadership ideas. The nursing profession must produce leaders throughout the health care system. Leaders must function as workers, and administrators with leadership qualities, while still meeting their budgets and running effective units with high functioning and happy staff members. They need to trouble shoot necessary and work with the medical faculty while pleasing their staff and the administers.

Nursing leaders must apply critical thinking and analysis skills in order to find opportunities to improve gaps in care. Consequently, nurses with the ability to identify, understand, and influence opportunities for improvements while consistently achieving quality and safety goals have unlimited opportunities to exercise leadership (Grossman & Valiga, 2012). Lastly, nurses whom have the understanding of the complexity of leadership and the awareness that the leadership role is something every nurse can fulfill will lead nurses towards change and advancing health as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and Institute of Medicine (IOM) has campaigned for action while enhancing nurses’ contributions to delivering quality

Nurse leaders are faced with issues or problems on a daily basis that are often expected and sometimes unexpected. It “comes with the territory” so to speak. If there were no issues to solve or hurdles to overcome the necessity of designating a leader would not seem quite as important. Nurse leaders can tackle issues that occur in their work environment using nursing theory to guide them. Nursing theory provides a framework that nurse leaders can use to implement interventions or changes to positively impact the staff they lead. This framework of the theory will set the standards for achieving the desired outcomes and is based on knowledge that is gleaned from practice and/or research.

Leadership may mean different things to different people, the consensus opinion of experts in this field is that leadership is using power to direct and influence activities of people to achieve set goals or targets. Nursing leadership is all about every nurse providing, facilitating and promoting the best healthcare services to client and to the public. Leadership is a shared responsibility. (CNO 2012). The nursing profession need leaders that can build the capacity of nurses through mentoring, coaching, supporting, developing the expertise and management skills of nurses to make a difference to the quality of patient care at all levels of the profession ( McIntyre & McDonald, 2014 ). At the core of every leadership either political or managerial is power and how the leader uses it. While it is practically impossible to lead without power, how the nurse leader uses this power not only determine the leadership style but also the results or outcomes of what is achieved through the process.

It involves the motivation and encouragement of others that is necessary for change and the maintenance of organizations, especially as concerns leaders in health care. However, a leader cannot lead without followers and the establishment of trust (Gesme & Wiseman, 2010). As recognized by the interviews in the DVD ‘Leadership in Nursing’, each leader has a different story and different experiences that have shaped them to be the leaders that they are today. They willingly shared their reflections and made it evident that no journey comes without challenge. Each nursing leader shared their style of leadership, their change process, the political situation, and failures or difficult situations, as well as their idea of what the future holds for the nursing profession.

Nursing leadership is also one of the very important messages of the 2010 IOM report on nursing. The IOM calls to expand opportunities for nurses to lead. It advises that nurses need to be prepared and enabled as leaders in order to advance healthcare. One of the recommendations states that “expand opportunities for nurses to lead and diffuse collaborative improvement efforts” (IOM Report, 2010). In that regards, a research article (Sherman, 2011) points out that charge nurses on frontline of acute care setting are the

Most recently, the quality of nursing leadership has been examined in the literature to better understand their influence on nursing staff relationships (Masi and Cooke, 2016). One of the major problems in nursing is the lack of nurses being actively engaged in efforts to positively influence the nursing profession (Ohman, 2016). Nursing leaders are being challenged to respond to this trend of disengagement by empowering nurses to develop the special qualities and attitudes that will enable them to become effective change agents (Ferguson,

In the healthcare field, nursing leaders and managers face consistent issues in their respective practices that force them to alter the way they work and the way they think. In taking on a role as a leader within the field, nursing leaders and managers also take on the role of ensuring that work within an organization runs smoothly regardless of new issues that may arise in the healthcare arena. For instance, in today's healthcare environment, the issues of nurse shortage and nurse turnover have the capacity to alter the healthcare field and many of its respective branches and organizations should these problems not be managed properly by the leaders in the field. In viewing the issue at hand and in discovering how nursing leaders and managers are expected to act, and do act, in order to approach this issues, along with pinpointing the best approach possible to aid this issue, one can better understand which leadership styles are necessary for leaders to function.

Nursing is a very complex career that at many times requires one to be a leader. Nurses can be leaders in formal roles and also on the unit during any given shift. Nursing is a career that truly tests the character and attributes of those who choose to enter this career. Leadership in nursing is vital in creating a successful environment for patients. According to Stichler (2006), “effective leadership is essential to transforming organizations into environments that are safe for both patients and staff” (p. 422). Therefore, it is vital that as new nurses start out his or her careers that they learn from great leaders who are already in the profession. There are several great leaders working in the field who have a plethora of