401213 Clinical Leadership And Professional Relationships
Question
Scenario
The two hundred bed hospital where you work has recently had some medication critical incidents. These critical incidents occur in the context of a general increase of minor medication errors over the last three years. The hospital’s most senior Nurse/ Midwifery Leader has reviewed the information on the state’s quality improvement website. The Nurse/ Midwifery Leader calls the Nurse/ Midwifery Unit Managers for a meeting and advises of the general increase in medication errors and that there is an expectation that all wards will have adopted the fully electronic medication system within six months. The electronic medication system is freely available from the government and can be installed directly onto the ward computers.
Discuss how an effective Nurse/ Midwifery Unit Manager would lead this change to address this patient safety issue.
Answer
Nursing Leadership
Democratic leadership is a style of leadership where the team members take part in the decision-making process within an organization. Consequently, democratic leadership allows followers or subjects to feel more engaged in the management process, more dedicated to objectives, as well as more motivated to work effectively. Democratic leadership plays a leading role in inspiring friendships and moral associations in the workplace, where it create employee ownership of the organization and its areas (Fiaz, Qin, Ikram & Saqib, 2017). During the 1930s, Kurt Lewin, a behavioural scientist carried out researches and recognized the importance of democratic or participative leadership in organizations. Democratic leadership in the nursing practice greatly allows nurse leaders to influence other leaders towards attaining the goals of the specific organization. Nurse leaders that adopt democratic leadership style act as facilitators rather than being dictators by promoting the sharing of ideas and information towards providing high-quality and safe care to the patients. Democratic leaders promote teamwork were the majority of the tasks are performed by different teams towards promoting efficiency. In addition, democratic leader encourages open communication and nurse staff in many decisions. Democratic leaders emphasize relationships towards quality improvement and processes in the organization, other than on mistakes of individual team members (Fowler, 2016).
I believe that I have the qualities of a democratic leader based on my past experiences during my practice as a nurse leader in my organization in critical care unit. I believe my democratic leadership stems from the fact that I am a relationship-and people-oriented. In my practice, I believe that the organization’s policies along with decisions in a group setting are best for all the people involved. Democratic leaders including myself stress teamwork and are willing to share roles to promote efficiency because teamwork will promote sharing of ideas and information. As a nurse leader I usually endeavored to promote teamwork that allowed sharing of ideas and information that improving the outcome of the nursing roles. This implies that I could often seek to promote policies and practices through group discussion and emphasized on teamwork (Fischer, Jones & Verran, 2018). My philosophy as a nurse leader was that an efficient manager not only inspires, but also listens to the contribution of employees; an efficient manager not only instructs the employees, but demonstrates the way instruction must be performed. This are designed to promote job satisfaction, efficiency, as well as work production. During my practice as a nurse leader, I always embraced teamwork where I formed different teams towards delivering care to different clients within the critical care unit. The critical care unit required teamwork because of the many critical care needed by different clients. I remember that the different teams that I formed within the critical care unit played a leading role in promoting efficiency than it was originally when I had not embraced teamwork. As a nurse leader, I ensured I become part of the team to boost the morale of the teams to delivering high-quality and safe care to patients (Day-Calder, 2017).
In addition, as a nurse leader, I embraced communication channels that ensured the contribution of the nurses are accommodated the views and opinions of the nurses. I ensured that nurses could freely air their concerns and I could be available for discussion to resolve the different issues within the workplace setting. More importantly, as a democratic leader I emphasized to listening more than anything else. I usually listened to the concerns of the nurses whenever we interacted with them. This became important because to enhanced the trust and rapport with the nurses that greatly increased efficiency in the critical care unit. In fact, communication played a leading in conflict resolution (McKeown & Carey, 2015). I stressed the significance of diversity when dealing with different people from different backgrounds and always respected their views.
The democratic style of leadership assisted a great deal during the group presentation. I was able to accommodate the views of the different team members and I respected their contribution towards group discussion. This style was instrumental in allowing me to appreciate the importance of teamwork and contribution of each member. I used the democratic leadership to learn to listen to the contribution of the team members and ensured that I carefully analyzed their views and then later react. I as interacted with the team members I was able to build trust that was crucial in understanding the diverse needs of the team members (Day et al., 2014). In addition, the democratic leadership was important during group presentation because it allowed me to be open in my communication to other members of the team and I often sought correction whenever needed.
References
Day, D. D., Hand, M. W., Jones, A. R., Kay Harrington, N., Best, R., & LeFebvre, K. B. (2014). The Oncology Nursing Society Leadership Competency Project: Developing a Road Map to Professional Excellence. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 18(4), 432–436.
Day-Calder, M. (2017). Develop your leadership style: The first in our three-part series on leadership in nursing looks at what elements go together to be consistently effective. Nursing Standard, 31(40), 37–38.
Fiaz, M., Qin Su, Ikram, A., & Saqib, A. (2017). Leadership Styles and Employees’ Motivation: Perspective from an Emerging Economy. Journal of Developing Areas, 51(4), 143–156.
Fischer, S. A., Jones, J., & Verran, J. A. (2018). Consensus achievement of leadership, organisational and individual factors that influence safety climate: Implications for nursing management. Journal of Nursing Management, 26(1), 50–58.
Fowler, J. (2016). From staff nurse to nurse consultant Clinical leadership part 2: leadership styles. British Journal of Nursing, 25(9), 522.
McKeown, M., & Carey, L. (2015). Editorial: Democratic leadership: a charming solution for nursing’s legitimacy crisis. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 24(3/4), 315–317.
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