Nursing Leadership of Florence Schorske Wald - Research Paper Example

Florence Yale served as an instructor at Yale initially, and then became dean. She resigned from her deanship after being inspired by Cicely Saunders’s (an English physician) work on hospices and pursued education in palliative care (Friedrich, 2011). Starting with an interdisciplinary team that led to the establishment of the first hospice in US, her hospice movement brought about many positive changes in the field of nursing in relation to care for the terminally ill and/or dying patients (Mills, 2003). 1.2 Significant Contributions to Nursing In 1971, Wald and colleagues opened the first Hospice in the USA (Mills, 2003).

The aim of this hospice according to Wald (1969) was to assist the persons going through the developmental stage of saying good bye in maintaining dignity and quality of life. After the establishment of this first US Hospice, Wald started a Hospice movement, which spread a lot in the following years and resulted in the establishment of more than 4700 hospices all over USA. Wald attained several awards and honors for her work and in addition to her contribution in motivating, organizing and training nursing, her highest contribution to the profession of nursing remains her Hospice movement (Bullough, 2000). . 1.

3 Leadership Strategies Wald was doubtlessly a great leader and inspired many others to take further initiatives in hospice (McKorcle, 2009). According to Adams (2010) Wald was critical of the way dying patients were treated after World War II. Her mission was to bring a change for the better in the care of dying patients. Her leadership was transformational; she imprinted a change in the field of hospice (Adams, 2010). Interviews from her close colleagues regarding her leadership style revealed that she included an element of caring while leading her team.

All her activities were research based and she motivated her team on basis of empirical evidence regarding the difference hospice care can make in the lives of the dying. Wald was in the habit of obtaining a consensus from her interdisciplinary team before implementing anything. She was a committed mentor and strived to enhance the quality of life for dying patients (Adams, 2010). 2. BARRIERS FACED BY FLORENCE SCHROSKE WALD Wald faced many barriers inclusive and exclusive of nursing in the pursuit of her mission. 2.1 Nursing Barriers The department of medicine was over burdened with patients after the World War II and the dying or terminally ill patients were deliberately shifted towards the end of sick ward, so as to discriminate between the patients who had hope of life and those who did not (Wald, 1979).

This situation in the country posed a problem in initiating and pursuing the Hospice movement (Adams, 2010). This was a great barrier faced by Wald, since it was difficult to convince the medical officials to treat the dying and non dying patients equally (Friedrich, 2011). Wald fought this barrier by immaculate transformational leadership and by involving the