The Complex and Multidimensional Concept of Nursing Leadership
Discuss about the Leadership Knowledge and Skill for Occupation.
Nursing is a challenging and dynamic occupation which inspires and engages leaders and role models. In the current conditions, it is become more demanding and challenging in health care environment to develop and identify nurse leaders in the nursing profession. The leadership concept is very complex and multiple dimensional (Wong, 2015).
Credibility is the ground of leadership, if followers do not have faith in their leader, they will not follow his/her lead. There are nine great leadership traits which will help the nurses being a good leader. Nine traits are empathy, inspiration, honesty, awareness, decisiveness, confidence, optimism, focus and accountability (Frankel & PGCMS, 2018). For nurses, bachelor’s degree and online RN to BSN program can be their first step toward becoming nurse leaders.
Once I was reading a book named “When Chicken Soup Isn’t Enough” which is knows for advocacy for nurses. The writer of a book states the stories of nurses who have stood up and been advocates for themselves (Gordon, 2010). While reading that book I came to know, when anything goes wrong in the hospital with the food, cleaning or visitors the Doctors always question and start shouting rudely at the nurses. As nurses spent lot of time with patients and deals with their families it becomes very humiliating for them to face them. According to me, this is a major challenge the nurses are facing while working at hospitals the Doctors always treat nurses as their personal assistant who will book dinner reservations, book cab for them or heat their food in microwave and if anything goes wrong in the hospital to protect themselves they start yelling at nurses. The nurses are not supposed to perform these roles in the hospital. As per me, nurses are accountable for developing healthy and safe environment which will support the working of health care team and contributes to patient engagement. Nurses should appoint a leader among them who will raise voice on their behalf, nursing leader should develop an effective ideas for the nursing organisation and form a relationship between management and interdepartmental staff (Merrill, 2015). In the profession like nursing daily new and different cases arrive in the hospital and every patient is different from each other, to treat them the nurses have to think creatively and need to generate new ideas especially in case of children. The nursing leader which is been appointed by nurses should have some creative in relation to their work. A creative leadership does not just focus on the existing solution but also includes creation and invention of new solutions for challenging situation and enhance the imagination and skills to apply the relevant concepts and theory. The current environmental trends make the creative nursing leadership a necessity (Laschinger, et. al. 2014). Nurse leaders should apply analytical and problem solving skills on regular basis to offer direction and mentorship to their unit nurses, in addition they can act as a link between other employees, various levels of hospital executive team members and management (Force, 2005). Besides their central duties of supervising and coordinating the health care system, the nurse administration is often accountable for the management of staff, management of financial resource, management of business and making large scale policy.
Nine Great Leadership Traits for Nursing Leaders
As the nursing care is expanding by including casualty clinics, surgical centres, emergency care centre and health care at home, the duties of nurse leader is also expands, now the nurse leaders are often responsible for contract negotiation and the management of interdisciplinary support service, work schedules planning and task delegating and distribution of responsibilities to nurses, arranging and overseeing training of nursing staff, budgets establishing and ensuring budgetary compliance, observing that nursing staff are delivering proper care facilities, recommendation of policy and structural changes and supervising the implementation of policy (Laschinger & Fida, 2015).
By obtaining master degree in nursing the nurse leader will acquire the meaning of creating effective patient care and coming up with the best strategy or course of action (Shamian, et. al. 2016). Nurse leader need to not just collaborate with doctors and nurses but also with patients family, chemists, physical therapists and social workers. As the technology increases interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork grow as more crucial elements for the safe care delivery.
People are different from one another in maturity, motivation, knowledge, responsibility and learning skills and they provide an impact on the way that they learn. Different people have different ways of learning. There are four various ways to through which a people desire to learn. These are Activist, Theorist, Reflector and Pragmatist.
Activists are people who learn by doing. To generate experience of learning they need to get into action. These type people are open mind and they like to do brainstorm and they are always ready for problem solving and group discussion (Rokstad, et. al. 2015). This type of personal style of learning influences the health care system in positive ways. With the help of this learning style the health care staffs gain new experience by working on live field they learn by seeing their seniors. They use their learning in their working which includes the experience of seniors and their new innovative
The next learning style is Reflector and it includes those people who learn by thinking and observing what happened. They don’t like to get involved in the issue they just prefer to observe from the side-line. They just want to stand in back and outlook for experiences from various perceptions. This learning style is better for those health care employees who are good thinkers and observer (Grossman & Valiga, 2016). They learn from what they see and by their own experience they don’t rush to conclusion directly, first they analyse the situation and then according to the perception they make their decision and in end with full plan and strategy they implement their ideas in their work.
Skills Required for Nurse Leaders
Another learning style is Theorist this includes learners who like to understand the theory behind the actions. They want facts and models concepts in direction to engage in the process of learning. They choose to draw and analyse new information (Rokstad, et. al. 2015). The staff members who are theoretical thinker will get benefit from this style of learning. In this they will understand the key concept of their work field. They get their learning more from medical books and journals which consists of facts and concepts.
The next learning style is Pragmatist which includes those people who are able to see how to put practice of learning into in the real world. The experimenters try out new theories, techniques and ideas, to see if it works (Merrill, 2015). This will help the nursing staff in gaining knowledge about the particular work. The nursing staff who is get inspired by this learning method will implement his/her experience and knowledge directly in their practical work field.
There are many challenges faced by nursing leaders in the changing scenario, digitalization of health and introducing of new technologies are affecting the working of nurse leaders, and on other hand the global health care is also becoming a challenge for them. Due to information and communication technologies, the hospitals are becoming more interested in reducing their cost and try to shift hospital care to home care. The new digital tools include telemedicine/tele-health, remote monitoring, mobile health apps, and wearable such as activity tracker (Fleiszer, et. al. 2016). These digital tools are reducing the importance of nurse leaders as all the functions which are to be perform by the nurses or nurse leaders is been perform by the apps and other digital methods. It is making the work of the Doctors handy and instead of employing nurse leaders they prefer to use a mobile app to work for them. Next challenge is, transformation of nursing in global nursing leadership, it requires active involvement and leadership practice (Kerr, et. al. 2016). Due to globalisation there are many changes take place in the health care system and the trends are keeps on changing and it became really hard for the nursing leaders to cop up with the instant changes. The health care system is changing drastically in the global health care market and to match the level, is becoming a really challenging issue in front of the nursing leaders and staff.
Challenges Faced by Nurses in the Changing Healthcare Environment
Becoming a nursing leader is a very complex task. The continuous changes take place in the health care environment, making their role more important plus difficult. The nurse leaders have to perform their respective work assign to them along with the changing takes place in the work culture. The nurse leader needs to perform a very important role in the nursing environment they act as an active person who is an in-charge, of the working of all other nurses. While performing the task the nurse leaders are facing many challenges like introduction of new machines or technologies in the health care system and digitalisation in the health care environment. To cop up with these changes the nurse leaders need to adopt new and creative learning styles which will help them in learning the new technologies and the use of machines and on other hand it will help them in becoming more creative which will enhance them to eliminate the risk of digitalisation.
References
Black, B. (2016). Concepts & Challenges nursing leadership. Journal of nursing administration 33(2), 110-113.
Fleiszer, A. R., Semenic, S. E., Ritchie, J. A., Richer, M. C., & Denis, J. L. (2016). Nursing unit leaders’ influence on the long?term sustainability of evidence?based practice improvements. Journal of nursing management, 24(3), 309-318.
Force, M. V. (2005). The relationship between effective nurse managers and nursing retention. Journal of nursing administration, 35(7-8), 336-341.
Frankel, A., & PGCMS, R. (2018). What leadership styles should senior nurses develop?. Journal of Risk Management, 10, 03.
Gordan. S, (2010). When Chicken Soup Isn’t Enough. Journal of Critical-Care Nurses. 30(6). pp. 86. Retrieved from https://ccn.aacnjournals.org/content/30/6/86.2.full.
Grossman, S., & Valiga, T. M. (2016). The new leadership challenge: Creating the future of nursing. FA Davis. Wong, C. A. (2015). Connecting nursing leadership and patient outcomes: state of the science. Journal of nursing management, 23(3), 275-278.
Kerr J., Shamian,, M. S., Laschinger, H. K. S., & Thomson, D. (2016). A hospital-level analysis of the work environment and workforce health indicators for registered nurses in Ontario’s acute-care hospitals. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research Archive, 33(4).
Laschinger, H. K. S., & Fida, R. (2015). Linking nurses’ perceptions of patient care quality to job satisfaction: the role of authentic leadership and empowering professional practice environments. Journal of Nursing Administration, 45(5), 276-283.
Laschinger, H. K. S., Wong, C. A., Cummings, G. G., & Grau, A. L. (2014). Resonant leadership and workplace empowerment: The value of positive organizational cultures in reducing workplace incivility. Journal of Nursing Economics, 32(1), 5.
Merrill, K. C. (2015). Leadership style and patient safety: implications for nurse managers. Journal of Nursing Administration, 45(6), 319-324.
Morsiani, G., Bagnasco, A., & Sasso, L. (2017). How staff nurses perceive the impact of nurse managers’ leadership style in terms of job satisfaction: a mixed method study. Journal of nursing management, 25(2), 119-128.
Rokstad, A. M. M., Vatne, S., Engedal, K., & Selbæk, G. (2015). The role of leadership in the implementation of person?centred care using Dementia Care Mapping: a study in three nursing homes. Journal of nursing management, 23(1), 15-26.
Wong, C. A. (2015). Connecting nursing leadership and patient outcomes: state of the science. Journal of nursing management, 23(3), 275-278.