My Clinical Experience As A Nursing Leader

“Nursing is informed caring for the well-being of others” (Swanson, 1993, p. 352). Kristen Swanson’s relationship-based caring theory encompasses maintaining belief, knowing, being with, doing for, and enabling. Nursing is a profession with vast opportunities for growth and development. Each nurse has his or her individual passions; mine reside within obstetrics, women’s health, and nursing leadership. Nurse leaders play an integral role in the success of healthcare organizations. Nurse leaders shape the roles of nurses within their organizations. Nurse leaders seek methods to improve patient care. They also use innovation to gain efficiencies in care delivery and decrease healthcare cost. Many nurse leaders have an ultimate goal to aspire to be a chief nursing officer in a healthcare

Critical reflection is an indispensable tool used in evidence based nursing practice. Critical reflection is often a difficult concept to define as all health professionals interpret it in diverse ways. However, one definition of critical reflection is the revision of nursing practice experience so that it can be described, analysed and evaluated to use that knowledge to improve on future practice (Bulman & Schutz, 2013). Critical reflection is essential for nursing practice because it ensures patient safety and provides holistic care. This assignment will discuss in further detail a description of an event, a reflection of thoughts and feelings and an evaluation of the positive and negative sides of the incident from both the nurse's and the patient's viewpoint and the consequences. Followed by an analysis of what can be taken away from the event to further improve future nursing practice as well as what can be done to improve one's own learning and develop an action plan using new knowledge.

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.

The field of nursing is one of the quintessential servant roles in our society today. We serve by taking care of our patient’s physical and mental (and sometimes spiritual) health. As a nursing student, there are three main characteristics that I have seen modeled in leaders that I think are most important to a servant-leader’s success. In my own practice, I hope to focus on all servant-leader characteristics, but these in particular as I strive for a lengthy and fulfilling career.

Sotomayor, G (2017). CNE SERIES. Clinical Nurse Leaders: Fulfilling the Promise of the Role. MEDSURG Nursing, 26(1), 21-32. Retrieved from

It seems ironic that this aspect of nursing is overlooked especially when nurses have so much responsibility to know their skill alongside of working with patience and their families not to mention being a team player with other co-workers. Curtis said in her article, “…clinical leadership is often relegated to a space late in the delivery of nursing education…” (2011, p. 344). However, Curtis also alludes to the problem of leadership training by saying that most often when nursing programs incorporate leadership training into their programs, the training ends up coming from a business approach that is then adapted to clinical leadership. She also indicate that there needs to be more emphasis on leadership training that directly correlates with clinical leadership (2011, p. 346). In addition, Barkhordari-Sharifabad indicates that not equipping nurses with leadership skills results in little to no confidence, commitment and motivation as side effects to the lack of leadership (2017, p. 2). Both of these articles realize the importance of leadership playing an important role in creating an atmosphere that is efficient pleasant, and

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.

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.

David S (2004), A practical approach to promote reflective practice within nursing. VOL: 100, ISSUE: 12, PAGE NO: 42

I’m fortunate to have a preceptor, who I see as a strong nurse leader, who assists me in increasing my professional insight by allowing me to take care of the unit with her guidance. I’m taking this opportunity to develop the skills I needed to become a future leader. I’m working on my future leadership roles today to contribute to patient safety and quality of care now and on the future. At the student nurse level, I establish leadership skills by being hands-on. I demonstrate self-confidence, improve my communication, thinking and reasoning skills and recognize my needs for personal and professional development. I am self-motivated and I show the staff my interest in

Nursing leaders must have the ability to create an organizational environment of caring, dignity and respect for all. According to Dunham-Taylor(2015), nursing leaders must be visionaries with a sense of purpose (Dunham-Taylor, 2015). As visionaries, nursing leaders must have the ability to communicate potential barriers to change and obtain ideas for improvement, properly communicate the rationale behind new organizational changes and engage the employees in spreading the organizational vision (Dunham-Taylor, 2015). Nursing leaders must model the way by exhibiting role modeling behaviors that are expected of all, engaging employees in team-based decisions, so they can become agents of change. Nursing leaders must be able to challenge

The Advanced Leadership course also allowed me to interact with three great nurse leaders who are passionate about and successful in their respective practices. First, Matt Quinn, in his lecture shared his experiences on changing a disruptive unit into a unit that fosters teamwork. As a novice manager, Quinn was able to influence a culture of change in his unit. His moral values and professional responsibilities acted as his foundation when he was making decisions for certain patient care situations. He shared the importance of fostering a trusting relationship between the staff and the manager and the importance of collaborative work in order to deliver the

No one said leading was easy, and in the book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John C. Maxwell addresses the principal of transformational leadership, and how there is more than one aspect in becoming a successful leader. In my opinion, leadership is one of the many desirable qualities in becoming successful not only in everyday life, but also in nursing. This paper will discuss ways to develop into an effective, successful leader, the necessary steps to increase leadership ability, and how leadership can affect personal growth in nursing practice.

Society benefits from effective leadership. However, effective leadership is not inherent to most people and requires development. As Ross Perot states “Lead and inspire people…Inventories can be managed but people must be lead” (Anderson, 2013). Exceptional leadership goes beyond a role of power. James Hunter writes in his successful book The Servant, that leadership is influence and all people are capable of leadership by the influence that they transmit into the world (2012). The role of doctoral prepared nurse practitioners extends beyond the confine of employee. The expanse of the nurse practitioner role includes leadership within the clinical, community, and national setting. As Hunter proclaims, everyone is a leader, including nurses. Therefore, it is imperative that nurses are the exceptional leaders that society benefits from.

As a caregiver, the role of the nurse involves much more than the physiological care that most people think of as being the sole duties of a nurse. A good nurse provides patient care that is holistic, which encompasses the physiological, spiritual, mental and cultural aspects of each individual patient (Sharon, 2014). It is a process of healing that involves the mind, body and spirit. To meet all the needs of a patient, the nurse utilizes holistic care to assist in managing the patient’s illness, symptoms, health, healing and function which is necessary for overall health (Potter, Perry, Stockert & Hall, 2013).