Introduction
Clinical nurses are an integral part of the healthcare profession and play a crucial role in decreasing costs and encouraging high-quality patient outcomes. Clinical nurse leaders are able to offer essential leadership at the point of care to improve the safety and quality of care throughout the healthcare encounter. Clinical leadership has been found to have an effect on the clinical care environment, including the provision of safe, high-quality care, work satisfaction, and nurse retention. Clinical nurse leaders are specialists who enable treatment that not only benefits patients but also the team. Strong nursing leadership is required to improve the quality of patient care and safety outcomes.
Self-Assessment
Recent research indicates that nurses are afraid to accept leadership positions in their practice setting due to a lack of expertise, being too busy, or feeling powerless. However, the core knowledge and competencies for clinical leadership could be identified by self-assessment using a leadership theory on the personal approach to supervision and knowledge of QSEN principles. This way, it would be evident if the practitioner is lacking in terms of experience or knowledge.
I would like to believe that I possess the general leadership qualities that allow me to form professional relationships with other colleagues more easily. My core principality lies within the integrity of my practice and dedication to my work. I prefer to establish friendly relationships with my colleagues to ensure smooth communication and decrease the likelihood of conflict arousal. This allowed me to increase my overall likability and define a general framework for operations and management of my subordinates. I believe that through my leadership and knowledge of core competencies of nurses’ capabilities of care, I was able to increase the efficiency of my team.
Leadership Theories
Various leadership theories exist and utilized in the context of nursing. The Trait leadership theory suggests that certain personal features or attributes impact a leadership capacity (Vana et al., 2022). It is also the philosophy that I myself favor in my managerial approach. Good leaders are often regarded as possessing characteristics like honesty, compassion, assertiveness, sound decision-making abilities, and likability (Vana et al., 2022). This could be evident when choosing how the team can best handle the day’s admissions and discharges (Vana et al., 2022). Consequently, it is possible to determine the practitioner’s leadership style’s strengths and weaknesses.
Other theories that could be utilized in the context of healthcare facility include Transactional and Transformational leadership. Transactional leaders inspire and influence people based on what they provide in return. If incentives are desired and penalties are undesirable, it is possible to influence behavior or performance (Vana et al., 2022). To drive workers to be on time, transactional nursing executives might give incentives such as a more attractive weekend day off for covering a short shift during the week and penalties such as disciplinary action for being late (Vana et al., 2022). Transformational leaders lead by example and encourage, inspire, and motivate people to exceed expectations, thus increasing both motivation and morale (Vana et al., 2022). This type of leaders earns followers by fostering connections, encouraging their development, and permitting change, creativity, and innovation (Vana et al., 2022). A unit charge nurse exemplifies this by assisting busy colleagues with patient care.
Quality Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN)
The QSEN competencies posed a challenge to nursing education to abandon this task-oriented approach. Their objective is to create competent nurses within the setting of an increasingly extensive and complex healthcare system (Vana et al., 2022). Patient-Centered Care is included among the competencies of QSEN. According to PCC, it is necessary to acknowledge the patient or designated individual as the source of control (Vana et al., 2022). Respect for the patient’s choices, values, and requirements drives the provision of compassionate and coordinated treatment. There is growing evidence that developing meaningful, caring connections and forming partnerships with patients and their families is advantageous. It may increase patient outcomes and staff satisfaction while reducing healthcare expenses and use (Vana et al., 2022). I am aware of these advantages and endeavor to ensure that my subordinates adhere to this framework as a fundamental care service philosophy.
Leadership and Management
It may be considered obvious that leaders are distinguished from managers by their impact and motivation. Leadership is the capacity to inspire others to accomplish shared objectives (Vana et al., 2022). In companies such as healthcare, management refers to the framework that creates an atmosphere in which the organization’s personnel may work to fulfill its objectives and vision (Vana et al., 2022). Communication is a fundamental ability of nursing practice, as well as of leadership and management (Vana et al., 2022). The qualities of inclusive, collaborative, and responsive leadership and management depend on communication. To maintain safety, leaders urge individuals to speak out and take action when necessary. Management does not necessarily include human resource management, but rather supervises the evolution of corporate objectives. Consequently, I feel I am deficient as a leader who can inspire my subordinates, and I would want to better myself in this area via transactional theory.
Conclusion
In my personal practice, I understood that it is difficult to implement the transformational approach in the workplace as the sustenance of motivation without the support of higher management becomes impossible. The healthcare center where I am working is highly bureaucratic, and this conservative organizational structure prevents innovative approaches to this style of management. Consequently, I believe the exploration of transactional leadership theory may increase the value of my practice and enhance patient outcomes. The incentives could be discussed with the management more easily than the equipment of inspiring transformative approaches to work as it implies continuous development and low interaction from the higher-ups.
Reference
Vana, P. K., Vottero, B. A. & Altmiller, G. (Eds.). (2022). Quality and safety education for nurses: Core competencies for nursing leadership and care management (3rd ed.). Springer.