The Importance of Leadership in Nursing

Leadership can be defined as the act of guiding or leading a team, organization or a group of individuals. Leadership is very essential in all fields as the leaders will provide guidelines on the directions the group will take and hence leadership is chose through the critical observation of the required qualities.

                        Leadership styles in nursing and the role of professional leadership

According to Baker (2011), the nursing environment there are various leadership styles and each one of them has a specific portion it plays in the healthcare system. This style will equip those who are administering leadership with adequate skills for the proper management of the organization. These leadership styles include transactional, transformational, democratic, authoritarian, and Laissez-faire leadership. Transactional leadership involve the cooperation of the leader with the follower through several punishment and rewards, transformational leadership focuses on the impacts of a leader’s behavior on the inspiration of the followers, democratic revolves around open decision making between followers and leader while authoritarian is demonstrated when the leader formulates all decision without involving the followers According to Block (2007), the professional clinical officers have a big role to play in the influence of the trainee and the patient’s outcome and hence should demonstrate good qualities of leadership skills.

                    Influence of leadership style on healthcare and self-development

          According to Eagly (2003), different leadership styles have several impacts on healthcare based systems and self-development. According to a series of studies, it is evident that transformational leadership is linked to minimize medication errors and reduced cases of mortality in the clinical fields. Leadership plays an important role in patients satisfactory in the homecare based systems and even acute care systems. Through good leadership styles, a reduced amount of hospital-acquired infections is observed and hence there is less restraint use. Transformational leadership was able to record a higher staff turnover as compared to other leaders and this will positively effect on safe climate. Leadership style has a major contribution of a learning nurse as it will impart skills through apprenticeship and focused observation, for example, democratic leadership will provide a common ground for a generation of more leaders through shared decision making while transactional leadership will motivate the development of self-assessment through rewards and punishments. However, all these leadership styles are accompanied by a number of challenges which include budget, quality and safety, patient satisfaction, staffing, and healthcare reforms.

           For an efficient healthcare system to run, there must be a budget on the allocation of various facilities and this will create a cumbersome task to leaders in case of a budget cut. To maintain quality and safety is usually very hard as the quality parameters should not deteriorate and should remain constant irrespective of budget cuts and hence maintenance of these controls is usually a difficult task. Patient satisfaction is the main aim of any particular healthcare system and hence a leader should aim in achieving all patients requirement in order to be ranked in the topmost healthcare provision. To achieve this a leader should embrace total participation with other staff which is usually not achieved with uncooperative nurses. Staffing is usually a very tough task since it involves critical analysis and selection of the right personnel in the right position, a task which is not easy since the judgment of different individuals might not be the same. Some other challenges involve digital and health technology which is usually a challenge for leaders with little or no computer technology skills and may lead to poor management.

                        Scenario two-Please don’t tell anyone, I will be in trouble.

The case mainly deals with Sarah who is a health student and has been assigned to a mentor, RN. According to the observation, it is very clear that RN does not administer her leadership skills which are essential for the learning of Sarah, but instead portrays a bad picture of leadership. RN has misused the first point of the leadership of mentoring and hence the story is significant in that leadership skills should be displayed from the lowest rank as possible. This story describes some of the influence of leadership on learning as Sarah has learned that one may commit a mistake in the failure of the administration of duty but still cover up the mistake.

In this case, the reflective model of STARL-P is of great use as it clearly reflects on what occurs and what should be done. The situation, in this case, occurs in a surgical ward where patients take medicine in the absence of RN but Sarah comes to its knowledge. As a good learning leader, it is important for Sarah to take a quick action and report the case to the supervisor. The action taken in this case by Sarah include reporting the incident to the supervisor without regards to RN commands. The reporting will obviously result in medication action to the patients and the possible result may even include discipline action to RN. In this case, the learning outcomes and the skills obtained is that it is usually advisable to take over fully the responsibilities allocated and achieve all the tasks including reporting any detrimental situation which may occur in the field of leadership.

                                         References

Baker, G. (2011). The roles of leaders in high-performing health care systems.

Bernhard, L. A., & Walsh, M. (1995). Leadership: The key to the professionalization of nursing. Mosby Incorporated.

Block, L. A., & Manning, L. J. (2007). A systemic approach to developing frontline leaders in healthcare. Leadership in Health Services, 20(2), 85-96.

Chen, H. C., & Baron, M. (2006). Nursing directors’ leadership styles and faculty members’ job satisfaction in Taiwan. Journal of Nursing Education, 45(10).

Cummings, G. G., MacGregor, T., Davey, M., Lee, H., Wong, C. A., Lo, E., ... & Stafford, E. (2010). Leadership styles and outcome patterns for the nursing workforce and work environment: a systematic review. International journal of nursing studies, 47(3), 363-385.

Donoghue, C., & Castle, N. G. (2009). Leadership styles of nursing home administrators and their association with staff turnover. The Gerontologist, 49(2), 166-174.

Eagly, A. H., Johannesen-Schmidt, M. C., & Van Engen, M. L. (2003). Transformational,    transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles: A meta-analysis comparing women and men. Psychological Bulletin, 129(4), 569.

Grohar-Murray, M. E., & DiCroce, H. R. (1997). Leadership and management in nursing.

Sellgren, S., Ekvall, G., & Tomson, G. (2006). Leadership styles in nursing management: preferred and perceived. Journal of Nursing Management, 14(5), 348-355.