NURS 4020 Leadership Competencies In Nursing & Healthcare
Questions:
- During this module you have been reading about safe practice. How can you apply this information to your current practice? Please give specifics.
- Define quality in your own terms and using your own ideas?
- After the readings about quality and care: where do you see opportunities for improvement in your practice?
- The Institute of Medicine defines six standards of quality health care. Choose one and expand on it. What does the standard mean to you?
- As you are reading Kegan and Lahey, how is your perspective about leadership changing?
- Reflect on your practice and discuss what aspects of individual leadership you use.
- Discuss how you will integrate reflection into your practice. For example, how will you get the courage to speak up and express your opinion when it may be a controversial issue? What reflective practice skills do you want to develop further?
- Give an example of when you used moral courage.
- Your final thoughts about the course and what you have learned? (quality improvement, Information management and leadership in healthcare)
Answers:
1. According to my understanding, I would start by defining safe practice as the ability to accomplish nursing assessments and interventions without causing any form of harm to either myself as a healthcare provider or to the patient. According to the National Safety and Quality Healthcare Standards, there is a section on clinical governance that dwells mostly on risk management Risk management involves provision of a safe environment to both the healthcare provider and the patient (Lin, MacLennan, Hunt, & Cox, 2015). There are several ways in which I can apply safety practice. This includes training of other healthcare professionals to attend seminars on the importance of safety practice. Besides, I would also encourage or educate them to undergo immunization against infectious diseases like Hepatitis. Safe practice under the NSQHS also involves information management. At my place of work, I would ensure all patient information is secure and safe and it can be retrieved anytime the patient is need.
2. The word quality is pragmatic and has different definitions depending on the field of specialty .I can define this term from both a subjective and the conceptual perspective. At the burns unit, I could define quality as the aspect of providing the best services to victims of burns. According to the nursing codes of ethics, there is a certain code known as beneficence. It states that any nursing intervention so be in the best interest of the patient. The patient should reap maximum benefits from whatever procedure he or she is subjected to. Quality on a subjective basis can also be used to indicate the level of satisfaction. In this case, the patient can offer a feedback on how he or she was subjected to quality services. This would mean that he was satisfied with whatever was offered by the healthcare professional (Démeh & Rosengren, 2015). According to the NSQHS, I would also define quality as a healthcare institution whereby all the eight elements of the NSQHS are up to the required standards.
3. After reading about quality and care, I have come to realize that there exist different opportunities or avenues that I can generally improve on my practice. One of the leading opportunities is research. The nursing profession will always need one to be updated on the current methods of nursing interventions that will lead to quality outcome especially at the Burn intensive care unit. This new interventions are only possible if there is continuous research .Another important opportunity for improvement is communication (Wong, 2015). Communication is the sharing of information between two or more opportunities. Sharing information can enable me to learn something that I previously never knew .I would ensure there is effective communication at the Burn intensive care unit. This thing might very productive or of quality. Communication is therefore a very important for improvement. The final opportunity for improvement in my practice is through setting goals. Setting goals will motivate me to work hard and improve on my weaknesses due to the satisfaction that comes with achieving them .Collaboration is also important since through collaboration, I can learn on better nursing practices.
4. According to the Institute of Medicine, there are six standards of quality health care and they include safe, effective, patient centered, timely, efficient and finally equitable. My standard of choice is safety. Safety in healthcare implies avoiding harm to the clients or patients. Clients have a lot of expectations from the healthcare. They always believe that they are very safe whenever they are in the hands of the healthcare providers .It is therefore the role of the healthcare providers to provide a safe environment for the patients (Tyczkowski et al., 2015). A safe environment includes that environment where there is no contamination especially at the Burn intensive care unit since most of the patients have open wounds that are susceptible to infections. This means that the patient should place in an environment that will not lead to other infections. Safety does not only involve the patients but the medical staff as well. All the staff should be provided with protective gears so as to avoid getting infections from the patients. There are some infections which are contagious for example cholera .The protective gear will therefore make the staff safe from the infections.
5.The Kegan and Lahey readings have totally changed my perspective about leadership. Previously I t leadership was all about dictatorship. The readings have however changed that perspective and I have to learn to leadership is all about communication, teamwork or collaboration and creativity .I would therefore ensure that there is collaboration with different healthcare providers at the Burn intensive care unit.I also used to think that leadership is only meant for those who do not joke .I have however come to learn that the key quality of a good leader is integrity. According to the 34th President of the United States of America, the supreme attribute of a leader is integrity and that is actually true based on the Kegan and Lahey readings as well (Ross, Fitzpatrick, Click, Krouse, & Clavelle, 2014) .I learnt that success in any setting depends on honesty and integrity and not dictatorship as I used to think. This is because whenever there is honesty and integrity in any organization, success will always be visible. This therefore means that the leader should be honest for others to see.
6. During my routine practice at the Burn intensive care unit, there are different aspects of leadership I employ. One of them is integrity and honesty. All leaders are expected to be honest so as their followers can follow suit. I have always been honest whenever I handle victims of burns so as to gain trust from my clients. Another aspect of leadership that I employ during practice is confident however the situation might be tough at the Burn intensive care unit. Leaders are expected to be confident at all times(Fischer, 2016).This is because being uncertain with your decisions will always make the subordinates to lose trust in you .I am always confident in what I do so that others or the clients can trust me and whatever I am doing to them .Inspiring others is another important leadership aspect I employ while at the hospital. I always motivate other staffs whenever they feel discouraged. I always look for a reason to motivate them despite the tough situations. Good communication is the final leadership that I always use. This is because good communication will always allow good decision making.
7. Reflection is the ability to think of what happened in the past and what you did about the same. During my practice at the Burn intensive care unit, I will integrate reflection by using a diary whereby I will be noting down whatever happened during the day and how I acted upon the scenario. Through this act, I will be better placed to handle a similar case in the future (Regan, Laschinger, & Wong, 2015). There are different reflective skills that I want to develop further and they include extensive reading, inquiry, being watchful, paying attention to different emotions, sharing views with colleagues and finally spending some time to think about my work. To get the courage to share and express my opinions even though they are controversial, I will have to learn how to be frank through continuous sharing of my views with my colleagues.
8. According to the Kegan and Lahey readings, moral courage is ability to take action for moral reasons regardless of the adverse outcomes. There are several instances where I have used this aspect during my practice .One such case was when I encountered a teen girl who had been burnt by her parents and she was in a critical condition. The reason as to why she was burnt was because she was pregnant. The parents were well aware that they would be prosecuted at the court and they therefore wanted me to give a false report that the victim was burnt accidentally(Makaroff, Storch, Pauly, & Newton, 2014).I however stood firm and told the parents of the negative consequences of issuing false reports and results. I felt that it is not moral to cheat as a healthcare provider despite the adverse consequences from the parents. There was another case whereby I was denied the chance to attend to a critically ill patient just because I was young .I however felt it is morally wrong to discriminate others and I went ahead and attended to the patient.
9. The course on quality improvement, Information management and healthcare leadership in healthcare has been a very educative and enjoyable course as well .The course should be introduced through all healthcare institutions. I have to learn of what quality means. Previously, I used to focus more on quantity but I have come to appreciate the fact that quality is key is any healthcare staff (Ha & Pepin, 2018). The course has also enabled me to learn on how better or quality leadership can positively impact the general performance of the healthcare providers .I used to think that leadership is all about being authoritative and dictatorship. I have however come to learn that quality leadership is all about communication and collaboration. I would say that the course has been wonderful since it has taught me on how to be a good leader .Since quality is paramount at all levels of operation, I would recommend that this course be taught throughout the curriculum and not just a single year or semesters.
References
Démeh, W., & Rosengren, K. (2015). The visualisation of clinical leadership in the content of nursing education—A qualitative study of nursing students’ experiences. Nurse Education Today, 35(7), 888-893. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2015.02.020
Fischer, S. A. (2016). Transformational leadership in nursing: a concept analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 72(11), 2644-2653. doi:10.1111/jan.13049
Ha, L., & Pepin, J. (2018). Clinical nursing leadership educational intervention for first-year nursing students: A qualitative evaluation. Nurse Education in Practice, 32, 37-43. doi:10.1016/j.nepr.2018.07.005
Lin, P., MacLennan, S., Hunt, N., & Cox, T. (2015). The influences of nursing transformational leadership style on the quality of nurses’ working lives in Taiwan: a cross-sectional quantitative study. BMC Nursing, 14(1). doi:10.1186/s12912-015-0082-x
Makaroff, K. S., Storch, J., Pauly, B., & Newton, L. (2014). Searching for ethical leadership in nursing. Nursing Ethics, 21(6), 642-658. doi:10.1177/0969733013513213
Regan, S., Laschinger, H. K., & Wong, C. A. (2015). The influence of empowerment, authentic leadership, and professional practice environments on nurses’ perceived interprofessional collaboration. Journal of Nursing Management, 24(1), E54-E61. doi:10.1111/jonm.12288
Ross, E. J., Fitzpatrick, J. J., Click, E. R., Krouse, H. J., & Clavelle, J. T. (2014). Transformational Leadership Practices of Nurse Leaders in Professional Nursing Associations. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 44(4), 201-206. doi:10.1097/nna.0000000000000058
Tyczkowski, B. A., Vandenhouten, C., Reilly, J., Bansal, G., Kubsch, S. M., & Jakkola, R. (2015). Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Nursing Leadership Styles Among Nurse Managers. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 39(2), 172-180. doi:10.1097/naq.0000000000000094
Wong, C. A. (2015). Connecting nursing leadership and patient outcomes: state of the science. Journal of Nursing Management, 23(3), 275-278. doi:10.1111/jonm.12307
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