Reflection On Nursing Leadership

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.

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.

In retrospect, what I learned in collaborative healthcare will be a solid foundation on which I will build my nursing leadership. To render care to the sick irrespective of their values, preferences, age, socioeconomic status, culture respect and dignity, demonstrate that the nurse leader is exhibiting compassion, ethics and knowledge. These aquacades must be continuously incorporated and utilized with professional clinical judgement and evidenced-based knowledge to yield the best patient outcomes (Finkelman, 2012).

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.

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.

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

My nursing leadership philosophy is based on transformational leadership to which I ascribe. Transformational nurse leaders have a vested interest in the success of those they lead and their organization’s vision. They are visionaries in the pursuit of cutting-edge ways of completing the tasks and goals of the team and organization. They are able to inspire, encourage, open to mentorship, see the potential in those they lead while challenging them, and knowing their strengths and weaknesses. I am cognizant of my own limitations, strengths and weaknesses, acknowledge my mistakes and open to change.

Leading a health care organization comes with immense responsibility and is not an easy task. Transformational leadership has proven to be an effective leadership style in the nursing profession, demonstrating a clear mission, a commitment to excellence, and the ability to motivate and lead others to higher levels of achievement (Schwartz, Spencer, Wilson, & Wood, 2001). Characteristics and qualities of an effective leader include

The type of leadership theory the chief of nursing facilitates is transformational leadership. In the transformational leadership, “the leaders and followers raise one another to higher level of motivation and morality” (Grossman & Valiga, 2009, p. 73). After the training was completed, we felt comfortable and equipped to responding to an emergency in a war zone.

The main focus of the theory is motivation, inspiration and empowerment to create changes. It is based on the idea of empowering others to facilitate overall goal. Bennis and Nanus (1985) describe this new leader as a leader who “commits people to action, who converts leaders into leaders, and who converts leaders into agents of change” (p.3).177. According to processes to engage and motivate staff article “Transformational leadership is important for high quality care delivery, and behaviors that nurse leaders inspire, role model and reinforce are instrumental in creating work practice that deliver optimum care”.

Transformational leadership is an emerging type of leadership that is more adaptable the changing environment within healthcare and has the ability to guide and empower staff to embrace the changes (Finkelman, 2012). This type of leadership is especially important today with many nurses felling unsatisfied, or unappreciated. In order to have a successful organization, it must first have the ability to retain nurses through job satisfaction. Transformational leaders have the ability to encourage staff members to embrace the changes to come, by promoting such things as team work, and recognition of hard work done by staff members (Smith, 2011). Having the ability to recognize staffing needs along with the compassion to try and meet those needs while maintaining the functionality of the organization, is the key to future

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

Without competent leadership change can have negative impact on both the employees and the patients. According to Wright (2010), lack of leadership in change management could lead to adverse outcomes such as resentment, rebellious attitudes, and could end up damaging the same people it intended to make better (p.20). Therefore, experts warned that it is very important to have competent leadership at the helm of change management (p.20). As the focus of providing leadership shifts to nurse administrators who are often in the frontline of change management, nurse administrator should use essential tools such as the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) five domain of competence as a framework in change management.