Impact of Sleeping during Night Shift among Nursing Staff
Discuss about the Leadership in Clinical Practice.
Patient safety and patient care is the main focus of every health care professionals and health care centre and in order to provide efficient service an effective leadership is required in the health care centre (Wong, Cummings & Ducharme, 2013). In the current clinical situation, effective leadership in clinical practice ensures the high quality health care service and provides safe and adequate care with consistency. It is important for the nursing professionals to recognize the theories related to leadership in the clinical practice. It would help to enable the nursing professionals to improve their skills and become an efficient leader, which helps them to improve their relationship with their colleagues. Effective leadership helps to resolve many issues related to the service provided by the nursing professionals and the health care centre (Scully, 2015). In the current scenario, sleeping of the nursing staffs during night shift is one of the main issues in the health care centre that create problems to the patients and reduces the quality of the service provided by the health care centre (Johnson et al., 2014). The essay will focus on the seriousness of the issue, why change is required in health care centre regarding this and barriers to change. The following paper will give us proper idea about the role of effective leadership in addressing the issue in an effective manner.
In the modern society, night shift is a common feature of most of the workplace and nursing field is one of the most important workplaces where night shift is important in order to provide 24 hours service to the people with need. It is important for the nursing professionals who are working in the night shift to remain alert about the needs of the people during their shift (Douglas, 2014). Nursing is the field of emergency. There is no specific time for being sick. Thus, the nursing professional need to be prepared in order to attend any emergency case during their shift. It is important for a nursing professional to provide effective care to the patient at the time of their need in order to satisfy the patient with their service. In the night shift it is more important to remain awake during the shift, monitor the condition of the patients, recognize their problems and provide effective care service if needed. Thus, sleeping in the workplace such as health care centre during night shift could create serious issue for the patients, as they would have to suffer for it (Edwards, McMilan & Fallis, 2013). In the current scenario, sleeping of the nursing staffs during night shift is one of the main causes that are creating critical problems to the patients and the management as well. Such activity in the health care centre leads to the ignorance of the patient safety. The nursing staffs fail to provide quality care to the patients due such irresponsible activity. People prefer admitting the patient in the hospital as they promise to provide 24 hours effective care in order to improve the health condition of the patient. Thus, sleeping during night shift and ignoring the responsibility of the patient result in the reduction of the patient satisfaction, hence, provides negative outcomes. The health care centre contains some night policy, where it is mentioned clearly that no nursing staff is allowed to take nap during the night shift. Thus, if the nursing staffs sleep during the night shift, it means they are violating the night shift policy of the health care centre, which is not acceptable by the management. It results in reducing the reputation of the health care centre. Thus, the issue need to be addressed in an effective manner in order to provide efficient care service to the patients and meet their requirements to achieve positive outcomes. Hence, effective leadership is required in the clinical practice in order to prevent the nursing professionals from sleeping in their workplace during night shift, make them understand the importance of their job, convince them to take their job more seriously and inspire them to sustain positive attitude regarding their responsibility. An effective leadership could help to bring changes in the management of the health care centre in order to achieve positive outcomes (Gopee & Galloway, 2017).
Importance of Effective Leadership to Address the Issue
However, beside such recognition of the issue related to the sleeping of the nursing professionals during night shift and importance of effective leadership in bringing change in the system in order to counter the issue, the barriers for the leaders in the way of change is considerable. One of the most important challenges for the leader is to make the nursing staffs acknowledged for their irresponsible activity and recognized the seriousness of their job, because, it is the responsibility of the individual to maintain positive attitude towards their work. Adequate resources for the development and appropriate construction are the base of bringing change in the system (Spurgeon, Clark & Ham, 2017). Hence, poor construction and lack in the resources for the development programme could create obstacle in the way of change. In order to provide effective leadership and achieve expected out comes, efficient team performance is important. Thus, poor teamwork could create challenges for the leader to bring effective changes in the health care system. In addition, lack of commitment and vision and poor interdisciplinary relationships need to be considered as some important barriers as they could lead to poor leadership provided by the leader and the role of such leader might be unacceptable in the clinical practice. Incentives could play an important role in motivating the nursing professionals, thus, poor incentive structure is a barrier to the changes in the health care system (Grossman & Valiga, 2016). Other barriers include the clinician cynicism, lack of confidence in the leader and poor communication skill, as the leader need to be confident in approaching to the nursing staffs and communication skill is important to build effective relationship with the colleagues (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). Thus, to implement effective leadership in the clinical practice and address the issue of sleeping of the nursing professionals during night shift, the leaders should first recognize such barriers in the health care centre in order to make effective strategies to resolve the issue and manage the system in an effective manner.
Leadership is an important function of the management. The leadership process inspires the team member to understand the needs of the workplace and provides proper strategies to meet the requirements by facilitating individual in order to collect effort to accomplish the objective. Leadership is the main source of management that increase the efficiency of the team in order to achieve goal (Porter-O’Grady, 2015). Thus, proper leadership could help the health care organization to overcome the issue of sleeping in the nightshift. In order to address the issue, the leaders would establish a trustworthy relationship with the followers so that the opinion of the leaders could be acceptable by the followers. The leaders would design a particular schedule regarding the shift of individual and ensure that every nursing professional are comfortable with their shift timing (Yoder-Wise, 2014). The leaders would make understand the importance of the job role to individual in a process of storytelling rather than in the way of criticise the nursing professional. It could help the leader to gain the trust of the staffs, so they could easily accept the approach of the leaders (Butts & Rich, 2013). The leaders would communicate with the nurses in an effective manner to understand the needs and concerns of the nurses regarding their shifts. It could help the leaders to provide comfortable shifts to the individual. Through the effective communication, the leaders would express their expectations for the nursing staffs that could motivate the nursing professionals to improve their skill in order to develop their career. Such communication could help the nurses to understand the value of their contribution (Huber, 2017). Thus, the nurses could increase their effort regarding their commitment towards the health organization in order to achieve their organizational goals. In order to contribute in addressing the problem of sleeping in the night shift, the leaders would recognize the central reason regarding the occurrence of such mistakes by the nurses (Ginter, 2018). Arranging a meeting with the staffs is important for this case in order to make understand the staffs about the seriousness of such irresponsible activity and its effect on the health of the patients and the reputation of the health care organization. During the meeting, the leader would listen to all the staffs without getting defensive and understand the prospective of individual in order to provide effective resolution for the issue. After understanding the seriousness of the issue and analysing effective suggestion to resolve it, the leaders would provide effective policies in order to prevent such irresponsible activities from occurring in future in the field of clinical practice (Barr & Dowding, 2015). Thus, the contribution of leadership could play an important role in addressing the current issue, as it is the duty of the leaders to motivate the staffs to improve their skills and efficiency in order to provide effective service and achieve desired outcomes.
Barriers to Effective Leadership in Addressing the Issue
In order to contribute effectively in the workplace the leaders must contain some skills. One of the most important skills of the leaders should be their communication skill. The leaders must communicate in a way that could motivate the team to improve their efficiency of taking responsibility (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). The leaders should use the skill of guidance not the commands in order to motivate the team. Team building power is another important skill that the leaders should posses. The leaders must have the efficiency to build a proper team that performs well in order to achieve positive outcomes. The leaders must have the skill of setting goal. The leaders need to set goal for the staffs so that they could effort to achieve it. Such vision motivates the staffs to take positive steps towards achieving the goal. Beside this, the leaders should be responsive to the needs of the staffs and should have the skill to understand any situation or issue in order to provide effective resolution for it (Porter-O’Grady, 2015).
Such contribution of the leaders would be beneficial for the health care organizations in order to resolve the issue of sleeping of nursing staffs in the night shift. The strategy of preparing schedule for the shifts with the concern of the staffs could help to make the nursing staff comfortable with their shift. The idea of arranging meeting in order to discuss the seriousness of the issue, understand the prospective of the nurses and providing effective solution could help to resolve the issue in an effective manner (Thomas, 2015). The night shift policy could help the organization to prevent the nurses from doing such mistakes in future. The effective communication skill of the leaders could help the nursing staffs in understanding the value of their contribution (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). The idea of allowing the nursing staffs to present their prospective regarding the shift could help to gain the trust of the nursing staffs and it could help to motivate them to do their job more efficiently in order to achieve expected outcomes (Porter-O’Grady, 2015). Such effort of the leaders in order to counter the issue could help to provide 24 hours service to the people with need and could meet the satisfaction level of the patients.
From the above analysis, it can be concluded that, sleeping of nursing staffs during night shift is one of the most important issues that the patients are facing in the health care organizations and effective leadership is required in the clinical practice in order to counter the issue in an effective manner. Effective leadership is the process that helps to improve the capability of individual. The leaders could introduce effective interventions to resolve such issue. Their communication skill, discussion making skill, way of approaching to the nurses, effort to understand the problem and providing effective policies as resolution would be beneficial for the health care organizations. Such contribution of the leaders would inspire the nursing staffs to prevent themselves from doing such mistakes in the future and inspire them to provide sufficient service in order to meet the requirement of the patients and achieve positive outcomes.
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