CNA417 Exploring Nursing Leadership
Questions:
Identify three nursing leaders you would like to interview for this paper. The nursing leaders may have a variety of leadership styles, but they must all currently hold positions of leadership.
1.Ask the leaders what they believe is their preferred leadership style and ask them to describe how that style has helped them achieve success.
2.Explain why you chose each individual leader.
3.Identify, compare, and contrast their styles and note any examples of servant or transformational leadership.
4.Identify missed opportunities or questions you wish you had asked during the interviews.
Answers:
Introduction
Nursing is a dynamic yet challenging profession that requires engaging and inspiring leaders or role models. Proper implementation of the specific nursing leadership theories and styles of leadership helps to increase the quality of care. The following assignment is based on interview conducted over three different nursing leaders and analysis of their nursing leadership styles.
Thesis statement
Effective nursing leadership styles help to increase the quality of care of overall patient’s outcome
Preferred leadership styles and its importance
Leader 1
Preferred leadership style: Transformational leadership
Leader 1 is of the opinion that the preferred leadership style is transformational leadership. It is a type of leadership, in which the behavior of the leader transforms and inspires the teammates. This help them r to deliver beyond the expectations while transcending self-interest for the betterment of the organization. Leader 1 opined that, “my transformational leadership styles helped me to reduce the reported cases of the medication errors along with improvement in the patient mortality”. Leader 1 also opined that, “following transformational leadership also helped me to motivate my team mates and keeping them dedicated towards their work”. This opinion of leaders 1 holds significance under the context of the published literature. According to Hutchinson and Jackson (2013) a transformational leader provides inspirational motivation involving vision of the future to their followers and motivating them to deliver beyond the expectations. This intellectual stimulation generates a positive energy, helping the nursing professionals working under transformational nursing leaders to deliver their best during pressure and that too on quality; this reduces the overall chances of error.
Leader 2
Preferred leadership styles: Servant leadership
Leader 2 is of the opinion in his leadership style, he make sure to satisfy the requirement of the individual team members while giving each person personalized inputs in the decision making process. Thus, it can be said that leader 2 follows servant leadership style. According to Parris and Peachey (2013) servant-leader puts the requirement of the others first and thereby helping people to develop and perform in a highly productive manner. Here the power pyramid is turned upside down that is instead of people working to serve the leaders, the leader serves the people. This unlocks the purpose and ingenuity of the teammates, helping to secure higher performance and engaged team collaboration. Leader 2 is of the opinion that, “In my leadership styles, I actively listen to the requirement of my team mates and support them in their decision making process and this helped me to earn their faith and loyalty and thereby increasing overall team performance”. In nursing, increase in the team performance is guided by the increase in the quality of care procured to the patients.
Leader 3
Preferred leadership styles: Democratic leadership
Leader 3 is of the opinion that the, “I encourage in open communication and include my team members in the decision-making process. For me the relationship is important among the team members who help to focus on the quality improvement as a ream rather than highlighting the mistakes of the others”. Thus, Leader 3 follows democratic leadership style in nursing. According to Giltinane (2013), a democratic nursing leader tend to increase job satisfaction along with team engagement via taking into consideration all the diverse opinion coming from the different team members. Leader 3 further stated that, the style of leadership helped to increase the staff development along with decrease in the turn-over of nursing professionals. Moreover, feedbacks given to the teammates in a friendly approach helped them to improve on the quality of care.
Reason for selection of the leaders
I have chosen three nursing leaders from a single public funded hospital in United States. Three nursing leaders are from three different units in hospital like pediatric, palliative and emergency department.
Reason for selecting pediatric nursing leader (leader 1)
According to Corno and FETCS (2013), the nursing professionals operating in the pediatric unit are required to manage endless problems experienced by the sick children and this includes genetic disorders, pre-natal diagnosis, prematurity, neonatal physiology, traumas, limited resources and ambulatory monitoring and care. Corno and FETCS (2013) is of the opinion that working under limited resources, high workload increases the stress among the nursing professionals along the rate of medication error, and an effective leadership style is the best possible way to control the entire situation.
Reason for selecting palliative care nursing leader (leader 2)
According to Oishi & Murtagh (2014), caring for dying patients is extremely demanding. Family of caregivers has frequently acknowledged numerous unmet requirements associated with the role of the nursing professionals. Family members of the end-of-life care patients have reported that they require more information and support from the healthcare professionals. This demanding requirements coming from the family members and stringent end-of-life care requirements of the patient increase the challenges of the nursing professionals working in palliative care. Proper intrapersonal communication and support from the nursing leaders the best way out to reduce the stress of this profession while increasing the quality of work (Oishi & Murtagh, 2014).
Reason for selecting emergency department nursing leader (leader 1)
According to Adriaenssens, De Gucht and Maes (2015), organizational and job related characteristics of the nurses are important predictors of stress and health related outcomes. The nurses who operate in the emergency department are exposed to stressful work-related events along with unpredictable work conditions. Proper leadership style helps to y handle the entire situation along with providing motivation to the nursing professionals to work under pressure.
Compare and contrast leadership style
As per my understanding from the interview, transformational leadership style inspires the team to perform their best and creates a highly productive environment. On the domain of the servant leadership, I have concluded that it promotes positive cultures while uplifting the morale of the staffs. Democratic leadership is slightly different from transformational and servant leadership and it encourages open communication while increasing job satisfaction and staff engagement. However, I think in servant leadership styles, listening to the requirement of all the team members can delay the decision making process. In transformational leadership styles, what I have noticed from the excerpts of the leaders is, it motivates the employees to perform, overlooking the details of getting the job done.
Proper framing of the questions in the domain of the challenges the leaders experienced while executing their particular leadership style might have helped me to draw more detailed comparison among the three different nursing leadership styles.
Conclusion
Thus from the above discussion it can be concluded that three effective nursing leadership styles are transformational leadership, servant leadership and democratic leadership. Proper nursing leadership style helps to increase the quality patient outcome and while decreasing the rate of nursing error and nurse turn over.
Reference
Adriaenssens, J., De Gucht, V., & Maes, S. (2015). Causes and consequences of occupational stress in emergency nurses, a longitudinal study. Journal of Nursing Management, 23(3), 346-358.
Corno, A. F., & FETCS, F. (2013). Great challenges in pediatrics. Frontiers in pediatrics, 1, 5.
Giltinane, C. L. (2013). Leadership styles and theories. Nursing Standard (through 2013), 27(41), 35.
Hudson, P. L., Aranda, S., & Kristjanson, L. J. (2004). Meeting the supportive needs of family caregivers in palliative care: challenges for health professionals. Journal of palliative medicine, 7(1), 19-25.
Hutchinson, M., & Jackson, D. (2013). Transformational leadership in nursing: towards a more critical interpretation. Nursing inquiry, 20(1), 11-22.
Oishi, A., & Murtagh, F. E. (2014). The challenges of uncertainty and interprofessional collaboration in palliative care for non-cancer patients in the community: a systematic review of views from patients, carers and health-care professionals. Palliative medicine, 28(9), 1081-1098.
Parris, D. L., & Peachey, J. W. (2013). A systematic literature review of servant leadership theory in organizational contexts. Journal of business ethics, 113(3), 377-393.
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