Leadership plays a crucial role in nursing. Nurse leadership qualities are associated with increasing knowledge, skills, and decisions required to facilitate clinical and administrative outcomes while working with individuals from different situations, sites, and settings. Leadership is the process of influencing followers to accomplish common goals and work with management to integrate and coordinate resources. The interviewee is nurse manager for labor & delivery and antepartum Therefore, the analysis is conducted with the nurse manager Miss TM interviews to identify their leadership style and direction of the healthcare.
Interview Summary
The interview was conducted in a healthcare system. The interviewee is a nurse manager Miss TM. She holds a masters’ degree in nursing. Miss TM position is Labor & Delivery and antepartum. She has experience of over 4 years and participates in-house training. Miss TM graduated from Hopkins University School of Nursing with a bachelor degree in Nursing. She has acquired a concertation in leadership from Welden College. She holds certification in Inpatient Obstetric Nurse (RNC). Due to her experience in delivery department, Miss TM has qualified in the use of Electronic Fetal Monitoring (EFM).
Miss TM says leadership qualities are enhanced by considering other people’s welfare and collaborating to develop a collective solution to a bothering issue. A leader must ensure the workforce is comfortable; their needs are satisfied, and make changes to increase patient satisfaction. She says that she models the way to be a manager by improving nursing practices. Since she was given the nursing manager position, she has reduced the fall rate from 80% to 20% by implementing Sara Study to manage falls and QBL to reduce maternity death.
Moreover, Miss TM’s communication style is bottom-up. She considered her nurses to feel free to communicate anything bothering them. She implemented an open-door policy to motivate the nurse to feel comfortable asking for support, reporting issues, innovativeness, and consultation. She is the nurse manager for labor & delivery and antepartum. Hence, she understands the need to challenge the hospital processes. Therefore, she implemented a QBL machine that separates blood from fluid during delivery to know whether a patient is at risk of bleeding. The changes she made are evidence of her being a change agent that drives healthcare to improve quality of care and safety practices.
The nurse manager provides her unite to contribute in decision making and discussion. A monthly meeting allows the nurse to discuss challenges, items that need to be added, and areas of challenges. The meeting is a brainstorming activity that helps understand both the nurses’ individual and organizational needs (Hallock, 2019). The nurse says that Nightingale was a leader who inspired her when it comes to leadership and improving medical care quality and safety.
Specific Methods of Leadership Styles Displayed by Miss TM Nurse Manager
The method of leadership that the nurse manager uses is transformational leadership and democratic leadership. Krepia et al. (2018) indicates when leaders encourage their followers through motivation, strong moral values, perception, and beliefs to comply with organization goals display transformational leadership values. The transformational approach is the key towards change through influential factors, inspiration, individual consideration, and associating the follower in decision making and supports their career. Miss TM also exhibits a democratic leadership style as a nurse manager. Northouse (2018) define democratic leadership occurs when leader treats follower fairly, allow them to work independently without supervision, and try not to place themselves above them.
Miss TM’s transformational leadership is evidenced by her attributes of motivating staff to acquire certification in impatient obstetric. Miss TM’s organization requires a nurse manager to have at least 50% of nursing staff certified. She says that 75% of nurses in their unit are accredited. The high percentage of certification for the nurses led made them recognized and received an award in 2018. Miss TM describes her professionalism as part of her staffs’ goals growth. It implies that learning is a continuous process and a leader should provide brainstorming activities to enhance knowledge and expertise.
Additionally, as a nurse manager, democratic leadership is displayed through setting realistic goals for the workplace and the employee in her department. The purpose was to find the solution to challenging issues of falls rate in healthcare, and it amounted to 80% before she was promoted. After setting goals with the staff, the fall rate decreased, and in 2019, it was 20%. The fall rate was reduced after the nurse manager used a medical device called Sara Study. It is a device used to transfer bed laid patients in and out of bed. The safe care promotes mobility, self-respect, and feeling comfortble for patients after surgery, delivering a child, or muscle cramps. Transformational leadership focuses on change, and Miss Tm managed to change the fall incidences.
A transformational leader listens and promotes employee relationships to speak out about their issues. Miss TM is concerned about individual staff needs. She provides a monthly meeting to discuss their progress and report on areas of improvement, such as items needed to increase the quality of care. Miss TM listens to the staff’s needs and challenges. She then discusses the issues of concern with the chief nursing staff and director. After becoming a nurse manager, she realized the need for a Quantitative Blood Loss (QBL) parameter to determine whether a patient from c-section or vaginal delivery is at risk of hemorrhage. It is difficult to measure the amount of blood lost since it is mixed with fluid. She ordered a QBL machine to help separate blood from liquids to improve care and reduce maternal death after delivery due to blood loss. The nurse manager listens to the operating room nurse’s opinion and determines to resolve the problem when it arises. Therefore, her transformational leadership qualities are associated with change and quality care.
The democratic leadership style that Miss TM displays encourage open communication and staffs participation in decision-making. Her policy is an open-door policy that allows each nurse to visit at any time if they need to talk about something or support. Her department is like a family house which encourages the nurse to contact her. It implies that the open-door policy allows communication, the decision about any issues that might arise, and feedback. The democratic style provides the nurse with comfort by knowing they can talk to the manager at any given time (Krepia et al., 2018). The implementation of changes is done by first discussing an issue with the staff and moving forward to the director. Hence, the democratic leadership style creates nurse satisfaction, feeling accepted and ready to change.
Aspect to Model Myself in Nurse Leader
The most important factor I have learned through the nurse manager is a good relationship with colleagues. Even if Miss TM is the nurse manager, she does not decide and provides feedback without associating with the nurses. I have the problem of being a decision-maker and always want to choose others. I have never made a collective decision as I usually tend to defend my opinion and ideas to agree with them. From Miss TM, I have learned that to be a democratic leader; one should accept responsibility and persevere with challenges (Northouse, 2018). It implies that involving each member in a team to speak their ideas and come up with a collective solution increases diversity and satisfaction.
Additionally, a transformational leader accepts challenges and emphasizes emotional factors, intellectual approach, and workforce management (Krepia et al., 2018). I can model myself from Miss TM’s perspective to understand that teamwork and effective communication improve the working environment. Huber (2018) indicates that hierarchy is displayed as a structure of authority in an organization. It implies that those in a superior position can be authoritative and determine what the junior should do. However, Miss TM does the opposite as she has an open-door policy that ensures that each person airs their concerning issues and then finds a solution as a team.
Area to Improve as a Nursing Manager
The nurse manager can improve her department through structural empowerment. Embree et al. (2018) indicate that structural empowerment is the implementation of organizational strategies to support shard team government, support empathy using team, and open leadership communication. Fortunately, Miss TM exhibits these attributes, but there is a gap in knowledge management for the team. It is important for employees to feel comfortable, satisfied, understood and their needs fulfilled. However, when the values to empower is lost, a nurse manager can impact the turnover rate due to the lack of support, motivation, and satisfaction (Hallock, 2019). The nurse manager should provide that nurses with time off. Mostly, when employees are satisfied, they can work excessively and, in the end, become worn out by burnout. The nurse manager should consider this aspect to increase the quality of service and individual output.
Conclusion
Nursing leadership plays an important role in delivering quality services and a good working atmosphere. Through Miss TM, the leadership style of democracy and transformation exhibits what it takes to improve healthcare and improve employee and quality of care. Miss TM implemented a QBL machine to prevent death due to blood loss during delivery and Sara Study to enhance safety for falls. Thus, as a transformational leader, she changes the system to increase the quality of healthcare and safety practices. Team building and motivation improve nurse satisfaction. The interview has provided me with an experience in my future. I have learned the importance of involving team members in decision-making, working towards my career, and following set goals and objectives in the care setting.
References
Embree, J. L., Wagnes, L., Hendricks, S., LaMothe, J., Halstead, J., & Wright, L. (2018). Empowering nurses to lead interprofessional collaborative practice environments through a nurse leadership institute. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 49(2), 61-71.
Hallock, A.B. (2019). A Case for Leadership Development in Nursing Practice. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 46(3), 325-328.
Krepia, V., Katsaragakis, S., Kaitelidou, D., & Prezerakos, P. (2018). Transformational leadership and its evolution in nursing. Progress in Health Sciences, (1), 185.
Northouse, P.G. (2018). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice (4thed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
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