Leadership Of A Nurse Manager

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.

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.

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.

Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.

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

Cultivating the leaders of today and tomorrow will be indispensable to the execution of the impressive objectives delineated for the health service (NHS Scotland 2004). Leadership in nursing involves an amalgamation of clinical, academic, executive and political facets. Hence, there is the contingency for nurses to be leaders at the bedside, in universities, in the boardroom and in a political capacity (Gallagher and Tschudin 2010). The clinical nurse leader position is an emergent dynamism as health care endeavours to cope with the challenges of today’s intricacy and result orientation. (Gerard, Grossman and Godfrey). Nursing leadership is critical for effective practice as nurses emblematise the greatest discipline in health care (Sullivan and Garland 2010). Additionally, leadership in nursing has been established as a cost-effectual approach to enhance patient outcomes in times of constrained monetary reserves, when leaders can administer direction, impel change and embolden others (Murphy 2009).

Leadership and management are essential to any health care organization, balancing patient care, employees, physicians, and the organization. Nursing is founded on interpersonal relationships. As a people-oriented profession, nursing leadership styles are influenced by humanism. The mission, attitude, and behaviors of a health care organization begins with its leadership, which creates the direction and purpose of the organization. The purpose of this paper is to differentiate between leadership and management, describe views of leadership, and explain 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.

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.

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.

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