Leadership Theory Of The Nursing Practice

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.

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.

Nursing guidance is a complex but essential part of the nursing workforce. Guidance can come in the form of management and in the form of leadership. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but do not always mean the same thing. The nurse manager is often someone who has authority from the facility to be in management. The nursing leader may not have authority over other nurses, but may be a strong guide in the workplace for other nurses and nursing staff. Nursing as a profession is ever-changing and increasingly challenging. Nurse managers are tasked with an enormous variety of functions in their respective workplaces, budgeting, scheduling, hiring, disciplinary actions, implementing facility policies and procedures, and the

Now, the graduate level nurse’s leadership attributes have been described in scholarly sources. Based on the documents of the American Association of College of Nursing (AACN) (2013), essentials of graduate nursing must be skilled in organizational and systems leadership role. Specifically, they are supposed to assume leadership roles in quality improvement and patient safety initiatives while working in the interprofessional team context. APN must use communication in an effective way, with regards to speaking, scholarly writing, and group interaction. Nurse leaders should also demonstrate the working knowledge of the current healthcare system and its essential components, including delivery and payment models, sites of care, roles of various stakeholders in the process of care delivery (AACN, 2013).

After taking the Leadership quiz I discovered that my leadership style is Participative. Participative leaders often ask the opinion of group members and solving problems but ultimately make the final decision. I agree with my findings and I often apply this leadership style at work. I find myself asking other coworkers their opinion on how to troubleshoot a problem. In the nursing occupation it is very important to have teamwork. Being a participative leader exemplifies teamwork. This displays that I value the opinions of my coworkers and feel that everyone should be able to make recommendations and suggestions and as a leader I can take those ideas and make a final decision. On my unit I was a charge nurse and as a charge nurse I always tried to include the recommendations of my coworkers.

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.

Leadership is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the power or ability to lead other people” (Merriam-Webster, 2017). A leader may also be thought of as a guide or a director. Our sixth president, John Quincy Adams quoted that "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader" (GovLeaders.org, 2017). But what makes a nursing leader? In the book “Leadership & Nursing Care Management”, Huber defines a nursing leader “…as the ability to inspire confidence and support among followers, especially in organizations in which competence and commitment produce performance” (Huber, 2014, p. 4).

Every day, a set team of nurses and nursing managers set out to ensure the health and well-being of their patients. To achieve this goal, a nurse manager must adhere to a specific style of nursing leadership. There are many different styles of leadership in the healthcare field. Bass and Barnes (1985) stated that the two most common are transformational and transactional (as cited in Frankel, 2008, p.24). This paper will define leadership, the two different styles, how each are executed, as well as pros and cons of each.

Having effective leadership and management is essential for any health care facility to operate. Both leadership and management are an essential part to delivering quality healthcare to the patients that they serve. The foundation to any facility is nursing which must be led by the best leadership and management available for its continued success. This is the key to helping that facility to achieve a high level of patient and employee satisfaction. Having adequate staffing for any facility is an issue that many facilities face due to the shortage of nurses. This paper will compare and contrast nurse leaders and managers thoughts with the use of contract employees to assist with the shortage of nursing staff. It will also show support with theory, principles, skills, and roles of the leader versus the manager. It will also identify the writer’s personal philosophy of nursing as well as explain her own personal style of leadership.

Nursing career is one of the few fastest growing fields in the health care industry not only in the United States but also in the world. Nurse practice has drastically changed in the last decade and as a result the need for changes in nursing practice is becoming more and more important. The Institute of Medicine report discusses so many aspects in nursing but this paper requires detailing the impacts on Nursing Practice (Transforming Practice), Nursing Education (Transforming Education), and the Nurse’s role as a Leader (Transforming Leadership). These three key aspects are discussed in the following pages.

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 traits associated with nurse executives are honesty, credibility, supportiveness, visibility, and flexibility. Nurse executives analyze nursing functions and empower nurses through participatory decision making, shared governance, and employee involvement. Nurse executives share the vision and goals of the hospital and promote application of a nursing theory into the nursing care delivery system. They anticipate the future of health care and nursing and serve as monitor, role model, and preceptor to lower level management (Upeniecks, 2003). Nurse executives in the Magnet program are required to have advance practice degrees with certification in their specialty (ANCC). Understanding evidence-based management and enabling the use of evidence-based knowledge provides the nurse executive with the tools to improve patient outcomes. The transformational leader will remove barriers to improvement and encourage outcome based thinking. While nurse leaders are charged with questioning the status quo, nurse managers in the transformational approach to leadership are charged with maintaining the status quo.

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.