Introduction
The evolution of the healthcare system over the last decades makes clear the symbiotic basis of leadership roles and management functions in nursing. Besides the traditional manager skills, which include supervising fellow nurses and implementing a healthy and safe environment for patients and the staff, the nurses with administrative positions are expected to have additional skills that are associated with leadership. The researchers uncovered numerous factors, skills, and approaches that are necessary for a successful nurse leader-manager.
Definitions of Management and Leadership
The successful manager-leader should comprehend the management functions and leadership roles. Management commonly deals with organizing employees’ work based on scientific methods. All management theories beginning with Taylor (1911) study how to raise productivity and profit by distributing time and workloads and increasing the abilities of staff. Managers are usually appointed to their positions and have delegated formal duties and rights. Leaders are not always formal administrators, but they have strong personal skills in collaboration and communication that they use for the strategic development of their departments.
Problem-Solving and Decision-Making in Nursing: Theoretical Approaches to Problem-Solving and Decision-Making
Contemporary issues and problems in health care require new approaches. Ingwell-Spolan (2018) offers to change the education program for nurses as it does not correspond to the realities. The author highlights several necessary “new” skills: competencies in leadership, critical, and strategic thinking. According to Marquis & Huston (2021), there are several models for the effective decision-making process: the traditional problem-solving process, the managerial decision-making model, the nursing process, and the integrated ethical problem-solving model. Each approach has singularities, but they all include the assessment and identification of the problem, the analysis, the selection of the best alternatives, and tools for evaluation results.
Critical Elements in Decision-Making and Problem Solving
Marquis & Huston (2021) advise applying the critical thinking elements for decisions that have long-term consequences. It may take more time to gather data, generate alternatives and evaluate the results, but it helps to make more efficient decisions. There are several tools such as decision grids, payoff tables, decision trees, and consequence tables that help to order the information. A critical thinker recognizes and avoids weaknesses that can cause false logic, errors in collecting information, or evaluating results and reduce the effectiveness of decisions.
Integrated Leadership Roles and Management Functions in Decision Making
Moghaddam, Jame, Rafiei, et al. (2019) uncovered that head nurses gave the highest priority to strategic thinking skills, and the lowest one was to evidence-based decision-making. It shows that in the modern healthcare system, nurse managers are expected to integrate the traditional theories of management, strategic approaches, and leadership roles into their work. The successful administrator can recognize the goal of problem-solving, people who should be involved in the decision-making process, and the suitable scientific approach.
New Thinking about Leadership and Management
In the early 21st century, management’s functions were changed from controlling to leading employees, it was the beginning of the era of humanistic management. A new paradigm requires managers who can embrace various character traits, knowledge, and skills. Studies assert three factors that medical leaders should embrace: personal features, context-specific features, and activities (van de Riet, Merlijn, Berghout, et al., 2019). It detects that in the health care system, leader-manager cannot focus only on relationship building and communication. The productivity of the department and a good outcome for patients still have equal priority with other purposes.
Management and Leadership Theories
New theories of management and leadership prioritized the relationship between leader-manager and followers. Early theories that were developed in the first decade of the 21st century such as strengths-based leadership, Level 5 leadership, and servant leadership emphasize the leader’s character traits. Other theories as principal-agent theory, human and social capital theory, emotional intelligence (EI), etc. take into account personal qualities, environment, and circumstances.
Conclusion
Management in the contemporary healthcare system has become more complex than ever. A practical nurse manager should possess competencies and skills that combine management functions and leadership roles to match new challenges. They apply traditional approaches to manage the staff as motivation, new theories of leadership for building relationships between departments and followers, and clinical knowledge. The nurses in administrative positions are expected to have competence in problem-solving and decision-making, which allow them to manage the staff effectively and contribute to the strategic development of the departments, health organizations, and the whole health care system.
References
Ingwell-Spolan, C. (2018) Chief nursing officers’ views on meeting the needs of the professional nurse: How this can affect patient outcomes. Healthcare (Basel), 6(2), 56.
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2021). Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: Theory and application. Wolters Kluwer.
Moghaddam, N. M., Jame, S. Z. B., Rafiei, S., Sarem, A. A., Ghamchili, A., & Shafii, M. (2019). Managerial competencies of head nurses: a model and assessment tool. British Journal of Nursing, 28(1), 30-37. Web.
van de Riet, M. C., Merlijn, C. P., Berghout, M. A., Buljac-Samardžić, M., Carina, G., & Hilders, C. G. (2019). What makes an ideal hospital-based medical leader? Three views of healthcare professionals and managers: A case study. PLoS One, 14(6), e0218095. Web.