The Knowledge and Skills Required for Nursing Leadership - Essay Example

The Knowledge and Skills Required for Nursing Leadership in an Interpersonal Team Leadership is a discipline with a body of knowledge, theories, culture, and practice expertize. Nursing leadership emerges as crucial in building teams, creating positive communication with the healthcare setting, promoting innovativeness and achievement of healthcare provision goals. Leadership can be defined as a process of influencing people within the healthcare setting to accomplish stipulated goals through inspiring of confidence and support among followers. Relentless change in health care organization which continues to influence organization and care delivery has seen leadership become an important skill among all healthcare practitioners (Clark 2008). The mental health care sector in United Kingdom has in the last few years focused on transformational leadership as it seeks to improve the quality of service and patients outcome ((Allen, Gilbert & Onyett 2009). Some of the fundamentals of leadership include interpersonal relationship skills, empowerment of individuals, ability to instill confidence in others and ability to apply the problem-solving process. In today’s rapidly changing practice environment, nurse leaders are challenged to exert effective leadership in order to promote effective organization and increase individual productivity. The nurse leadership in UK mental institutions is expected to develop strategies capable of enabling followers to cope with inevitable changes within the mental healthcare setting as well as adapt to such changes in a positive way (Allen, Gilbert & Onyett 2009). This paper explores the knowledge and skills required for nursing leadership in an interpersonal team. Leadership Theories and Models Effective nurse leadership requires knowledge of various leadership theories, principles and the use of such theories to guide all actions within the healthcare setting. Creative leadership is particularly important in nursing leadership and involves inventing of new solutions to challenging situations, use of imagination and skills to apply relevant theory and concepts in solving problems (Nagelkerk 2005). In order to embrace creative leadership, nurse leaders must familiarize themselves with the various theories and forms of leadership applicable to the healthcare setting. Creative leadership can be demonstrated by ability to apply professional knowledge, personal power, and cultivation of appropriate personal values in the process of delivering care. The need for creative leadership has been triggered by increased diversity of staff and clients, significant shift from formal leadership to self-managed teams, and emergence of nurse leaders who serve as team leaders, internal consultants as well as sponsors. Owing to such changes, nurse leaders should demonstrate several competencies including effective, innovative and creative problem solvers, change makers, technology masters, team players, effective communicators, and ambassadors (Clark 2008). These competencies have become a necessity in the current highly dynamic mental health care setting in UK. The common leadership styles or models include the autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire leadership styles. Autocratic leadership styles involves making of decisions at the leadership or individual level without consulting other stakeholders within the healthcare setting. This form of leadership has been associated with several negative impacts including bad feelings among other workers, undercover retaliations, increased resistance, conflicts, low morale and low productivity. On the other hand, the democratic approach entails involvement of other people in the decision making process although the final decision may finally come from the leadership after consultations. A democratic leadership style takes into consideration ideas of other stakeholders and factors in such ideas in coming up with the final decision (Nagelkerk 2005). This way, followers are made to feel that they are part of the decision making process thereby providing support in the implementation of such decisions. The laissez-faire leadership style involves minimum involvement of the leaders through empowerment of other people to make informed decisions at individual levels. This form of leadership requires high levels of professionalism and motivation of all people to make creative decisions without interference or coordination from the top leadership. However, this style if wrongly applied may result into lack of coherence and conflict within the working environment especially when workers come up with conflicting decisions. Nurse leaders may also adopt the participative leadership style in which they fully engage people in decision making with high levels of collaboration in the decision making process. Participative leadership is particularly crucial in the mental health care sector especially because of the need to establish the root of the problem as well as the acceptable intervention for the patient and family members (Allen, Gilbert & Onyett 2009). Although the participative leadership style has been significantly emphasized, it may not necessarily solve all problems thereby opening room for the situational leadership approach. Situational leadership requires proper analysis of the situation in which decisions take place, available resources and support as well as the motivation and capability of followers. Situational leadership is essential in mental care delivery because clients present diverse situations that require situational decision making in order to achieve effective care delivery. Transformation Leadership The transformation type of leadership has emerged as the most relevant leadership style in the current mental health care service delivery setting in UK owing to the need for proactive leadership with the ability to shape the changing environment through a transformational process (Aarons 2006). Transformational leadership is based on the assumption that people follow leaders who inspire them through their vision and passion. For nurse leaders to exercise transformational leadership, they must visionary and people of high personal integrity (Marshall 2010). In addition, they should be able to maintain high levels of motivation in the workforce through upholding different forms of cultural symbolism including ceremonies and rituals. The nurse working environment can be transformed by nurse leaders through creation and sustaining trust through the organization and clear balancing between production and efficiency. Nurse leaders achieve transformational leadership through focus on effective communication, promotion of collaborative relationships and shared decision making among nurses. Professional and Ethical Practice Impact on Service User Care and Interprofessional Working Health and social care professionals and service users may assess their rights and responsibilities through their own ethical standards posing a potential source of conflict or tension during care delivery (Leathard & Laren 2007). Clients’ views on the actions of the healthcare professionals may conflict with the professional ethical code requirements triggering a source of disagreement between the healthcare providers and the clients leading to compromise on the quality of care delivered and client satisfaction. In the context of interprofessional working, ethical principles on such as confidentiality raise issues of the extent to which information about services users or patients should be shared across the different members of the interdisciplinary team and professional boundaries (Leathard & Laren 2007). The health care ethics code requires maintenance of high confidentiality standards in handling patient information, a phenomenon that may impact negatively on the delivery of quality care by the interprofessional team. Current collaborative approaches to the delivery of care emphasize that codes pose challenging organizational and political dimensions quite apart from the professional thereby threatening the credibility and effectiveness of the decision-making process. In this case, all healthcare sectors and providers should agree on the a standard code of interprofessional ethics reflecting the needs of all healthcare service delivery stakeholders including all healthcare professionals bodies and users (Nagelkerk 2005). This move would limit potential source of tension within the interprofessional team as well as between the healthcare providers and service users. Dialogue ethics provide an effective way of understanding and resolving moral disagreements arising within multidisciplinary teams which in turn lead to compromise on the quality of service delivered to the clients. Ethical dilemmas arising in the process of health care delivery often lead to delayed intervention which may resulting into worsening of a patient’s condition or even lead to death in case of emergency care. Promotion of mutuality, accountability and shared responsibility between professional disciplines provide an effective way of overcoming some of the practice and ethical issues arising in interdisciplinary teams (Leathard & Laren 2007). However, effective leadership in interdisciplinary teams emerges crucial in ensuring coherence and resolution of practice and ethical issues arising during care delivery. Therapeutic relationships between professionals and users based on ethical principles that embody respect and trust, significantly impacts on patient outcome. Health practitioners should be able to effectively manage their power within their relationship with the users in order to promote effective care delivery. Personal abilities, values and beliefs among the professionals can significantly influence the quality of care, patient outcomes and satisfaction among the care providers and the service users. Personal values and beliefs can either build or break interdisciplinary team through influence on the relationship among the professionals as well as the service users. Conclusion Effective nurse leadership is crucial in promoting delivery of quality care, patient satisfaction as well as cooperation among the mental health care providers. Nurse leaders must have adequate knowledge on the various leadership theories and concepts in order to adopt effective leadership. Several leadership styles such as the situational, creative and transformational leadership approaches have emerged as highly compatible with the healthcare setting. However, transformational leadership emerges as the most appropriate leadership style for the current highly dynamic healthcare setting. Professional practice and ethical principle impact on the service users in different ways including compromise on the quality of service, interdisciplinary conflict, and satisfaction and patient outcomes. References Aarons, G 2006. ‘Transformational and transactional leadership: association with attitudes towards evidence-based practice.’ Psychiatry Services, vol. 57, no. 8, pp. 1162-1169. Allen, R, Gilbert, P & Onyett, S 2009. ‘Leadership for personalization and social inclusion in mental health.’ Social Care Institute for Excellence. Retrieved from http://www.in-control.org.uk/media/6336/leadership%20for%20personalisation%20and%20social%20inclusion%20in%20mental%20health%20.pdf Clark, C 2008. ‘Creative nursing leadership and management. Jones & Bartlett Learning, London. Leathard, A & Laren, S 2007. Ethics: contemporary challenges in health and social care. The Policy Press, London. Marshall, E 2010. Transformational leadership in nursing: from expert clinician to influential leader. Springer Publishing Company, London. Nagelkerk, J 2005. Leadership and nursing care management. Elsevier Health Sciences, London. Read More