Bed Number Ten By Sue Baier Essay

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.

Effective communication is essential for a nurse in a leadership position. If a nurse is not able to convey or transfer pertinent information to other team members or clients, conflict or problems can arise. A nurse is able to effectively communicate through creating synergy, establishing a purpose or goal, actively listening, being truthful, and being responsible. When a nurse leader is able to successfully communicate, patient safety increases and medical errors decrease which leads to a higher percentage of positive patient outcomes. Effective communication fosters positive nurse-patient and nurse-team member relationships.

The Health Care System 's purpose is to meet the physical and mental health needs of the communities in which they serve, these systems operate using people working within heal care facilities as well as other health delivery resources. One group of individual that help with facility operations are nursing administrators. Nursing Administrators contribute in managing along with directing the nursing care delivery system. Their leadership style, characteristics, communication strategies, including the way that they negotiate as well as manage conflicts can determine the quality of the healthcare services treat the facility provide as well as help to develop a set of guidelines to standardize the type and quality of the nursing services. (Cipriano, 2011) Together the Nurse Mangers work toward the same goals along with guiding nurses in their practice and contribute to the facilities successes. (Frankel, 2011) The nursing leaders are advocates who directly affect the quality of the nursing care along with also having a positive impact on healthcare through leadership.

The next question posed to Rene inquired about essential characteristics of a leader. After giving the question some thought she responded by saying that a leader must be able to remain objective and prioritize. “Prioritizing in my job is essential,” Rene stated, “with so many issues to deal with some nights it can be difficult to determine which to tackle first. However, remaining calm and objective in your decision making can help a leader prioritize properly, which can improve patient outcomes.” Additionally, Rene emphasized that the best leaders lead by example. By displaying desired attitudes and behaviors, a nursing leader may inspire their staff to act in a similar manner. Another area Rene stressed when posed this question was a leader’s ability to support learning. She went on to state that “it is necessary to focus on learning, not chastising. Placing the blame on someone rather than stepping back and looking at the details of a problem, deters the team from achieving the overall goal. Incident reports remain vital to the process of learning.” Rene continued to emphasis that by filling out incident reports individuals can analyze a situation or process and determine where the flaws or errors remain present. Without incident reports and learning from mistakes, growth remains difficult. Diana S. Contino (2011), author of “Leadership Competencies: Knowledge, Skills, and Aptitudes Nurses Need to Lead Organizations Effectively,” believes that organizational and

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).

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.

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

Good leadership is demonstrated through educating future nurses, leading within the workplace, and being part of a nursing groups and organizations. Nurses should be working together to improve the care for all patients.

Not all nurses go into the profession with leadership ideas. The nursing profession must produce leaders throughout the health care system. Leaders must function as workers, and administrators with leadership qualities, while still meeting their budgets and running effective units with high functioning and happy staff members. They need to trouble shoot necessary and work with the medical faculty while pleasing their staff and the administers.

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 inspire others to work together in quest of a shared goal, for instance, improved patient care. The nurse leader is a critical thinker, sets goals, uses effective communication, and recognizes the emotional needs of others (Roskoski, 2012). Nurse leaders carry out any changes that are to be made that have been implemented by management.

Lily had only recently began dialysis treatment, and her unwillingness to proceed with treatment would have resulted in her care becoming palliative, something the healthcare professional did not think was suitable at this point in her illness trajectory. Tait (2012) points out that a critically ill patient experiences not only physiological trauma, but also psychological trauma. This psychological trauma that can be experienced after critical care has been addressed by the National Outreach Forum (2003) who suggested that services should be developed to address the implications of critical illness. Samuelson (2011) suggests that any negative emotions associated with critical care can be counterbalanced with memories that reinforce safety, control and trust. This is a useful point to consider in Lily case, who fortunately had the time to talk through her worries concerning continual dialysis treatment with the staff on the ward, who were able to convince her she was in the safest possible hands and that continuing her dialysis treatment would be the best option.

Leadership does not always come with a title or prestige. Every nurse has within themselves qualities that make them a great leader. Leadership by definition, “is a combination of intrinsic personality traits, learned leadership skills, and characteristics of the situation (Cherry& Jacob (2013 p. 335). A leader is one who has the capacity and skills to direct or encourage others in efforts to achieve an outcome. I recently completed a self-assessment on my perceived leadership abilities. The survey was called the Nurse Manager Skills Inventory (Nurse Manager Leadership Partnership, 2008). It consists of four content areas of which I will address and identify my strengths and weaknesses.

Anthony Robbins, an advisor to global leaders who has achieved many goals, states, “to effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others (About, 2014).” Comparing Robbins’ statement of leadership and communication between others to the role of leadership in the healthcare system, it is similar in ways that fit into a complex system that includes all healthcare professionals and the communication system between them. One important component of the complex and communication system is nurse leaders. A nurse leader is defined as a well-rounded person, who is empathetic, compassionate and respectful, while having the ability

An effective leader can create a working environment that satisfactorily supports the staff members so he or she can productively perform in his or hers’ assignments. The top three characteristics of an effective leader are the ability to communicate well, fairness to everyone on the team and are knowledgeable in his or hers’ field of practice. An effective leader must be able to communicate well with others to maintain and promote open communication among the team. When leaders deal with employee conflict, an effective leader is fair. These leaders motivate their nursing staff to work toward a greater good in creating a positive change (Dunham & Klafehn, 1990). An effective leader should be knowledgeable about his or her leadership role as well as those he or she is supervising.