Essentially, the field of medicine and nursing is dynamic and more recently a lot of focus is on the quality of medical service offered to customers. Nursing is a field that involves high-pressure situations which require quick decision-making. Clinical leadership ensures that the most appropriate decisions are made in such circumstances. There several definitions of clinical leadership but generally refers to policy drivers, and the less distinct aspects of service and role developments that enhance patient care, (Chávez & Yoder, 2015). Clinical leadership plays a very critical role in improving the quality of medical service offered by medical practitioners.
There are several attributes that nurses should possess to be good clinical leaders who can handle the various situations that arise at the place of work. These attributes include emotional intelligence, professionalism, mentorship, respect, professional socialization, communication skills, dedication to excellence, critical thinking, integrity, emotional intelligence and many more, (Huber, 2017). This essay discusses the importance of clinical leadership and describes a situation where the concept of clinical leadership has been applied. Clinical leadership is very important in solving the various conflict situations that are likely to happen among nurses in providing healthcare services.
Clinical leadership is essential in nursing and serves many functions in the general hospital setup. The importance of clinical leadership includes nurturing teamwork, enhancing positive growth, a proper organization as well as encouraging success, (Daly, Jackson, Mannix, & Hutchinson, 2014). Strong clinical leadership skills nurture teamwork through helping nurses and other staff to work together as a team. The nurses in the leadership positions enhance strong cooperation by promoting good communication among team members, promote collaboration and maintain the spirit of teamwork. Initiating and maintaining good communication is very crucial in improving the quality of service offered. Good communication between doctor and nurses as well as between nurses and patient ensures smooth operation in the hospital as well as improve customer satisfaction. All this is achieved through good clinical skills where nurses and doctors are informed about the value of clear communication as well as frameworks put in place to promote communication. Teamwork ensures the nurses, doctors, and other staff work as a unit and this easily helps in achieving the organizational goals efficiently and effectively.
Clinical leadership also leads to positive growth since good nurse leaders have the ability to assess their work processes and make the necessary adjustments critically. Nurse leaders can analyze the operation processes in the hospital, and if the operation is below the desired threshold standard, they initiate mechanisms that restore normalcy or even push the operations to the next level. Good nurse leaders also cultivate the culture of regular self-evaluation of the team members in orders to determine their weaknesses and strengths to improve the productivity of every individual. Improvement of individual productivity in an organization leads to positive growth of the organization by improving the general productivity.
For any nursing team to be effective in delivering their services to patients a proper organization must be present. In essence, lack of proper organization leads to chaos and ambiguity of responsibility among nurses and other staff members. Such chaos is not wanted in the contemporary healthcare that is very fast-paced and demanding. A good nurse leader will ensure that there is a good organization structure among the nurses and unit of command and authority. This will ensure that all the nurses and staff work towards achieving a common objective diligently. A good nurse leader will also be able to ensure the organization structure is well executed, identify any organizational weakness and problems and come up with creative ways to solve the problems. This may involve overseeing patient care, creating and updating monthly shift schedules as well as assigning special duties to some of the nurse team members.
Good clinical leadership also encourages success since it creates a conducive environment where the nurses and other staff are enthusiastic and passionate about the service they offer. Good nurse leaders lead by example by providing high-quality services and illustrating all the good attribute of a professional nurse. They should motivate the other team members so that they emulate the same and even exceed the expectations. Good clinical leadership helps the nurse to meet the required standards of nursing professionalism as well as promote creativity among the team members. Motivation is very important in ensuring that the nurses work well. Good leaders should be there to encourage and give support to the nurses going through a hard time as well as praise those doing extraordinary exertion. All this will ensure that the team succeeds in meeting their goals effectively and efficiently.
The conflict situation arises in a reputable public tertiary hospital that has over 1500 beds, and several work policies have been formulated by the administrators to ensure smooth operations of the hospital. One of the most important policies in the hospital is the night shift policy which forbids any staff from sleeping while on duty. All the nurses and other staff are completely aware of this policy, but despite the implementation of the policy, I got information that one of the nurses frequently slept on her night shifts. The nurse was violating the important policy and neglecting her duty by sleeping at the examining room and the nurse station.
I am a charge nurse in the hospital, and I am responsible for supervision and supporting a nursing staff as well as provide nursing services to a limited number of patients. I am in charge of a surgical unit in the hospital, and the nurse involved in the conflict situation is a member of this unit. In my position I am responsible for ensuring nurses offers high-quality patient care, acting as an educational resource for all the other nurses as well as evaluate the performance of nurses. As a charge nurse in the surgical department, I am the leader of this unit, and I am supposed to perform administrative duties such as to direct the admission and general flow of patients as well as assigning duties to nurses, (Scully, 2015). I should oversee the performance of the nurses and other support staff to ensure that policies are well implemented so that the patients receive quality healthcare services.
Once I had about the news of the nurse sleeping during her duty, I decided to take several measures to seek immediate resolution of the situation. I selected an appropriate time and scheduled a one-on-one talk with the nurse in my office to evaluate the trust and respect of the nurse. I requested her if she could spare a couple of minutes and come to my office once she was done with her duties and she agreed. The talk was casual, and I refrained from any form of criticism in the discussion, (Mannix, Wilkes, & Daly, 2015). During the talk, I was very keen on the thoughts of the nurse to recognize her concerns and needs as well as analyze how severe the situation was. The talk aimed to identify the root cause of her problem without criticism, (Ennis, Happell, & Reid?Searl, 2015). I also informed her of the faith and trust I had on her and the high expectations I had. The talk was a way of motivating her work hard and be committed to the organization just as is expected of her and this will contribute towards the achievement of the collective goal of providing patients with quality healthcare services.
The leadership style I demonstrated in this conflict situation is transformational leadership. This leadership was initially proposed by James MacGregor Burns, and according to his concept, this style of leadership involves a relationship between a leader and the subordinate that brings mutual motivation which results into value system congruence between them, (Goswami, Nair, Beehr, & Grossenbacher, 2016). According to this type of leadership, motivation is key to the success of any team and leaders should motivate their subordinate to adjust their inspiration, opinions, and expectations in orders to achieve organizational goals, (Démeh & Rosengren, 2015). Transformational leadership has four main components namely strong motivation, personal consideration, ideal impact, and intellectual stimulation. These four crucial elements of this leadership style are improving the productivity of employees in any organization.
According to research done in various organizations all over the world, this style of leadership greatly improves the satisfaction of the subordinate and their commitment towards work. This style can be implemented in many organizations because of its impact on organizational and individual outcomes. This leadership is practical and is being applied in many institutions in the contemporary world. The theory is mainly focused on change, and the leaders are expected to be the agents of change. The leaders use their personalities and attribute to empower their subordinates and colleagues, support them to achieve their goals as well as encourage them to strive towards the realization of organizational goals and objectives (Lewis, Heitkemper, Harding, Kwong, & Roberts, 2016). This leadership requires establishing and maintaining trust between the leaders and their subordinate through fair treatment and encouraging independent decision-making. The leader should have good communication skills to create a good interpersonal relationship with their subordinates to allow them to feel free to share their ideas and opinions, (Heckemann, Schols, & Halfens, 2015). This leadership style also requires leaders to strong self-confidence and a strong vision for the organization that the subordinates can emulate.
After talking with the nurse involved in the conflict I realized that she was experiencing some personal family issues at home that was making her stress. I was able to advise her and encouraged her to separate personal life with duties since almost everyone is fighting their secret battles, but they don’t let that affect their duties. I assured her of support during that time and challenged her not to disappoint me based on the high expectations I had for her. This proved to be very effective since in the days that followed I never had the same complaint from the other nurses and I even called her to congratulate her for the good effort she was putting in providing quality health services to the patients, (Lin, MacLennan, Hunt, & Cox, 2015). I realized that her moral was very high and informed her of how proud I was to have her as a member of our team.
To avoid further similar scenarios from happening I suggest that there should be a good interpersonal relationship between leaders and their subordinate. This nurse could not have openly shared her problem with me if we did not have a good interpersonal relationship, (Bender, 2016). Also, I suggest that the hospital should increase the CCTV coverage to include the nursing station and examination rooms. The available CCTV coverage was mainly on the main entrances and corridors. If the nurse was aware that there was CCTV cameras all over the place could not have slept for some hours during her shift. The other recommendation is to put monetary and social rewards that will encourage the team members in the unit to work hard to achieve their full potential, and this will increase the overall productivity of the hospitals. Considering all the above recommendations would ensure smooth operation of the hospital.
Conclusion
Clinical leadership is a very crucial element in ensuring nurses provides quality medical services and support to patients. Clinical leadership involves formulating policies and implementing them well by performing administrative and managerial roles. Nursing is a field that involves high-pressure situations which require quick decision-making. Clinical leadership ensures that the most appropriate decisions are made in such situations. Clinical leadership is very important in nursing and serves many functions in the general hospital setup. The importance of clinical leadership includes nurturing teamwork, enhancing positive growth, a proper organization as well as encouraging success. There are several leadership styles that nurses in leadership positions can use to solve conflict situations that threaten the realization of organizational goals. One of the leadership styles is transformational leadership which has been discussed above and its application in the health care sector.
References
Bender, M. (2016). Conceptualizing clinical nurse leader practice: An interpretive synthesis. Journal of Nursing Management, 24(1), E23-E31.
Chávez, E. C., & Yoder, L. H. (2015, April). Staff nurse clinical leadership: A concept analysis. In Nursing forum (Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 90-100).
Daly, J., Jackson, D., Mannix, J., Davidson, P. M., & Hutchinson, M. (2014). The importance of clinical leadership in the hospital setting. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 6, 75-83.
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.
Ennis, G., Happell, B., & Reid?Searl, K. (2015). Clinical leadership in mental health nursing: The importance of a calm and confident approach. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 51(1), 57-62.
Goswami, A., Nair, P., Beehr, T., & Grossenbacher, M. (2016). The relationship of leaders’ humor and employees’ work engagement mediated by positive emotions: Moderating effect of leaders’ transformational leadership style. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 37(8), 1083-1099.
Heckemann, B., Schols, J. M., & Halfens, R. J. (2015). A reflective framework to foster emotionally intelligent leadership in nursing. Journal of nursing management, 23(6), 744-753.
Huber, D. (2017). Leadership and Nursing Care Management-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Lewis, S. L., Bucher, L., Heitkemper, M. M., Harding, M. M., Kwong, J., & Roberts, D. (2016). Medical-Surgical Nursing-E-Book: Assessment and Management of Clinical Problems, Single Volume. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Lin, P. Y., 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), 33.
Mannix, J., Wilkes, L., & Daly, J. (2015). Aesthetic leadership: its place in the clinical nursing world. Issues in mental health nursing, 36(5), 357-361.
Scully, N. J. (2015). Leadership in nursing: The importance of recognizing inherent values and attributes to secure a positive future for the profession. Collegian, 22(4), 439-444.
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