Clinical Nurse Leaders: A Case Study

Observing and analyzing my leader opened my eyes to the amount of responsibility and knowledge one needs to be a great leader. These responsibilities that were witnessed during the shadowing project included aspects of role modeling, mentoring and educating fellow staff and colleagues alike. My leader possessed a well-rounded amount of experience, skills and knowledge about nursing and her management role. All of these aspects we observed and I feel my leader is not only strong nurse, manger and mentor; all these aspects contribute to making her a fine and valuable assets to our organization.

This paper aims to address and discuss about the leadership and management of the nurse leader interviewed. This experience was a great opportunity to witness first hand how a nurse leader cultivate and manage their staffs in real life setting. Moreover, it provides a great access to gain insight and knowledge about nurse leaders’ vital responsibilities and role diversities in the organizations they work with. Nurse leaders pay more specific and close attention in handling the staffs and most importantly, patient care.

American Association of College of Nursing (2012).White Paper on The Role of the Clinical Nurse Leader Retrived from: http://www.aacn.nche.edu/publications/white-papers/cnl

In this essay I will discuss the leadership style of 3 nursing leaders, which I chose from Nursing Leadership DVD (Orazietti & Singh, 2014). I will then describe impact the leaders ' style has on improving nursing care, organizational processes, and inter-professional collaboration. In addition, I will provide some examples of a change process or difficult situation which leaders encountered. Finally, I will explain how I have dealt with difficult situation involving my colleague and one of physician in the hospital department where I worked. Throughout this essay I will analyze what leaders should have done differently. 3 Leaders which I have chosen were Debra Bournes from group 1 because of her political and administrative success, Mina Singh from group 2 because she is renowned for her educational style at York University, and Esther Green from group 3 because she is the sound and knowledgeable practitioner.

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.

In my future role as an advance practice nurse I will be spending my time interacting with patients discussing their complaints

While patient care is at the center of what nurse leaders do as well, the help and support they give their fellow nurses is very important.

For decades, something was missing in patient care. Crucial quality and safety-improvement professionals involved in healthcare delivery were formerly not located in the places where care was actually provided. This often resulted in a disconnect that fragmented healthcare quality, safety, and improvement. According to Reid and Dennison, in their article The Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL)®: Point-of-Care Safety Clinician, “The role of the Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL)® restores this vital connection. The CNL is a clinician who brings the locus of control for safe and quality care from the administrative areas straight to the unit’s providers who deliver the services. “

Leadership is encountered in every occupation and in everyday life. In nursing, leadership is not only prevalent; it is crucial to patient care and employee satisfaction. The nurse leader that was interviewed was a nurse at the Newport Hospital in Newport, Washington. This is a small hospital in a rural community. She is a charge nurse in the acute care unit, as well as in charge of leading infection control in the hospital. With these roles comes a lot of responsibility, and tasks that must be completed in a timely manner to create a workflow for the rest of the staff. There is a lot of juggling and balancing everything that is included in all of those positions.

The CNL provides direct clinical leadership at point of care in order to advance care delivery that is safe, evidence based and targeted towards optimal quality outcomes. The CNL education is focused on analyzing the microstructure to improve patient outcomes, streamline processes and facilitate cost reduction therefore I see the CNL benefiting 4S/3S/ACE as a point of care leader wh focuses on nursing quality indicators, JCAHO standards/initiatives, as well as organizational goals.

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) white paper in 2007 proposed a new role in nursing: Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) to improve the health care outcomes (Sotomayor, 2017). The aim of the CNL is to utilize a master prepared nurse to practice across the continuum of care within diverse healthcare setting in today’s changing healthcare environment (AACN, 2013).

There are many skills, traits, and behaviors one must possess in order to be an effective leader. The American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) has compiled a list of competencies and skills that nurse leaders should be proficient in. The five competency domains identified by AONE (2011) are “communication and relationship building, knowledge of health care environment, leadership skills, professionalism, and business skills” (p. 3). The competency domain I believe is essential for one to possess in order to be an effective executive nurse leader is communication and relationship building. The competencies AONE (2011) listed under the domain communication and relationship building are “effective communication, relationship management, influence of behavior, ability to work with diversity, shared decision-making, community involvement, medical staff relationship, and academic relationships” (p.3). I will discuss how Tom (nurse manager of a psychiatric unit) did not meet these specific characteristics under that domain.

I believe that the DNP prepared nurse leaders are in the right position to enter the field of web-based education for the patients. Patients of today’s health care world are more educated and some of them are web savvy. In most cases, patients obtain health information form the web, which may not be from reputable sources. However, educating patients are one of the key roles of nurses, and the DNP prepared nurses have wells of knowledge to guide their patients on this path. For instant, patients with chronic diseases (diabetes, hypertension, COPD, asthma, and HIV need supportive tools for adequate self-management), and the DNP prepared leader have the ability to develop such tools. According to Heinrich, et al (2012) that the key to self –management

In both case studies, I think you have done an excellent job identifying the patients’ risk factors. As a Clinical Nurse Leader it is important to educate patients on both modifiable risk factors and non-modifiable risk factors. You identified modifiable risk factors like obesity, physical activity and tobacco use. You also identified a non-modifiable risk factor: family history. Some other non-modifiable risk factors are: age, gender, and ethnicity.

Health care is a necessity and a service utilized by all persons at some point in their lives. It is essential for individuals to receive the best quality of care with best outcomes possible. However, this is not always the case. According to Jukkala, Greenwood, Motes and Block (2013), the health care system is not perfect and still presents the opportunity for medical errors and inequities that place patients at avoidable risk. The Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) although a fairly new role to nursing was created by the American Academy of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) to help alleviate the unnecessary errors or disproportions that many clients face (Stavrianopoulos, 2012).