Introduction
Leadership is essential in propelling modern-day organizations to the next level, ensuring the goals and objectives are achieved by employing critical strategies to drive services that foster patient satisfaction. By utilizing their skills to transfer patients’ wants to realities by offering professional services to them. This paper will look into the critical roles that influential leaders play in ensuring crucial managerial tasks of prioritization and delegation are achieved to promote the efficiency of services. Further, it will review different case studies of similar setups with a bid.
Leaders need to ensure that the wants of the patients are identified and that they are prioritized. Patients want to get better. However, we need to appreciate the different processes in peace to offer professional services to them; leaders are there to harness strengths from availably human and non-human capital to ensure this is achieved. According to Gilroy (2019), leaders play a critical point in fostering communication and building essential feedback mechanisms at work. A working communication model will ensure 1fedback circulation is adopted and appreciated to offer reliable patient care. Bottlenecks to reliable and efficient communication are addressed via effective Leadership.
Literature Review
The complexity and demand requirements in the Nursing field call for total quality management leadership to ensure the critical human care objectives are met. Leaders offer much-needed guidance to different levels of support and staff to ensure that their work is structured to return value and optimize that work environment for all nurses and support staff (Gilroy, 2019). The need to ensure that patient care is given essentially and safely calls for the correct form of inspiration and Leadership; this explains the focal role of leaders in nursing practice.
Leaders are tasked with setting the vision and directions to guide other professionals to attain the organization’s goals. It is necessary to ensure that the work environment, tools of work, team setup, and inspiration set in the work environment drives toward the overall goal of affecting patients’ care. Moreover, leads are tasked with monitoring performance or reviewing the working modalities to make the desired changes or improvements o ensure that any arising problems are dealt with promptly.
Leaders need to ensure the correct form of teams and specialists are available to attend to patient needs. It is crucial to appreciate the efficiency that comes with essential human capital management. As a result, it is required that a leader understands the staff, their specialties, and the different needs of patients in a hospital or patient care setup. They will ensure the correct form of talent is recruited and the necessary budget approvals are given to facilitate this quest (Reid et al., 2020).
The net to ensure prioritization is done is a unique skill leader need to possess. On a day-to-day basis, and later to weeks, the quarter, and eventually a financial year, set objectives must be met and delivered. Leaders must work with the team members to prioritize tasks and discharge them in that order. It is necessary to ensure that urgent cases that need urgent care are treated with the same measure. One significance of prioritization is that it aids with the mitigation of risks that may be associated with a given case or task. Nurses need to assist with providing the correct form of risk assessment and situation analysis to distribute the workload and seek guidance where necessary (Gilroy, 2019).
The art of delegation practiced by leaders helps to ensure that no vacuums are left at work in the absence of the leader or other essential nursing staff. It is necessary to ensure all nurses get the correct form of skills, exposure, and training to deliver in their assignment areas and occasionally get an opportunity to participate in extra activities around their workstations. Delegation helps ensure workload distribution is done and tasks are completed in good time. Also, it ensures sufficient coverage for all roles, even without any nursing personnel or the team leader. Leaders need to play a role in shaping future leaders; delegating some of the tasks to junior nurses will provide a platform for them to learn and showcase their leadership abilities; in this way, they are groomed for the future and to take over Leadership even in other sectors of the nursing sector (Gilroy, 2019).
Importance of Leadership in Nursing
Leaders who participate in essential delegation and prioritization are likely to get blow listed benefits in their work setup:
- Improved efficiency from prioritization of duties and uniform allocation of duties
- Reduction in stress levels as the workload is shared among staff
- A motivated workforce who appreciates the objective setting mechanism and task assignment to close on the objectives
- Improved patient care from streamlined processes in the nursing setup and focus
The benefits from effective Leadership in nursing, therefore, help to improve the quality of care given, aid with additional motivation, help with workload management, and eventually in attaining the goals of an organization.
Leadership Styles and their significance in Nursing Practice
Leaders can use different leadership styles to push their mandate forward in the nursing sector. Leadership is essential in all nursing domains, as explored in this paper, and it provides an overall value chain addition in the healthcare sector. Healthcare leaders’ responsibilities encompass patient care, staff welfare, and the efficient functioning of healthcare establishments. Leaders and managers use some leadership styles described below to reach their ultimate goals. This work will review some of these styles and examine their significance in healthcare (Reid et al., 2020).
Autocratic Leadership – is a leadership style distinguished by a dominant leader who assumes full responsibility for decision-making and provides minimal opportunities for input from others. This form of Leadership is essential and efficacious in times of crisis; however, it may also be perceived as excessively controlling and unapproachable.
The democratic leadership style – is distinguished by a collaborative approach to decision-making. Democratic Leadership emphasizes the importance of team member input and promotes their active involvement in the decision-making process. This form of Leadership has the potential to yield positive outcomes in terms of bolstering team spirit and fostering active participation. However, it may also be characterized by reduced levels of efficacy.
Transformational Leadership – Leaders here can transform the ways of operations in an organization. There have a sense of charisma and consistently attain several set goals. Their production outcomes are always efficient.
Servant Leadership – this is a people-oriented form of Leadership where the leader joins the teams and helps discharge daily tasks; it encompasses a lot of humility and empathy and provides a very ambient form of the work environment.
Given the different leadership approaches, Servant Leadership and transformational Leadership stand out. Thaw collectively will give a form of Leadership termed optimal Leadership. Providing nursing care calls for empathy for the clients. Likewise, there is a need for a leader to be transformational and visionary to provide the correct form of direction to the nursing staff. The best form of Leadership needs to provide an efficient workplace and show empathy to the patients; in this way, they must transform their work environments to provide this form of motivation (Leadership Matters, 2020).
Leadership Qualities and Skills
Leaders who show the optimal approach must be able to show the following forms of qualities and skills:
Visionary -leaders who help to propel the objectives of an organization forward. They inspire their team members to help meet the objectives of an organization.
Communication – leaders need to build mechanisms and channels that promote all forms of communication vertically and horizontally. Good leaders ensure that feedback streams work and that there is room for positive criticism.
Decision-making skills – leaders ought to be fervent decision-makers. The nursing work environment is faced with challenges occasionally, and it is necessary to have the correct form of judgment to guide the team forward. Also, it is necessary to provide vital decisions aligned with an organization’s overall strategy; leaders are tasked with perfuming this task (Reid et al., 2020).
Promoting empathy – leaders need to help show empathy to their staff, which needs to be translated to the patients. The nursing environment calls for a lot of compassion and empathy; like in the dreams of founding mother Florence Nightingale, it is necessary to extend empathy to all persons regardless of status. This will trickle down to the organization and provide the needed empathy for care to patients.
Diverse – leaders need to be socially and culturally diverse. In a more miniature world like today, interaction involving workers and patients will involve much cultural diversity. Leaders are tasked with ensuring that their teams are well-balanced and that their sections have no prejudice or cultural or religious biases.
Problem-solving – conflicts always arise in workplaces; it takes a good leader to deploy the correct problem-solving approach to mediate between conflicting parties and reach a fair resolution favorable to the organization’s working environment.
Alongside these qualities, leaders must also show humility, resilience, optimism, adaptability, and courage. These qualities help leaders to provide the correct form of guidance needed in an organization and thus are used as an inspiration to drive the Nursing organization forward (Leadership Matters, 2020).
Prioritization in Nursing
Significance of prioritization
The art of prioritization involves ensuring consideration of urgency, severity, and an assessment of impact in nursing care; the following reasons discuss some signs of the same (Gilroy, 2019).
Help with resources management – prioritization provides room to utilize available resources to assist patients with the most needs first. This translates to efficiency in using time, skills, and other resources while delivering patient care.
Prioritization aids with enhancing patient safety. Handling critical cases will ensure patient safety is taken care of. This means priority is given to assisting patients with severe cases and thus reducing the potential impact of harm to them.
Prioritization also helps with adaptability in the nursing setup. It is evident that work environments are dynamic and that change is inevitable in today’s setups. By adopting prioritization in service delivery, nurses can deliver on critical duties that align with their overall objectives (Leadership Matters, 2020).
Process of Setting priorities
The considerations and process of setting priorities may differ from organization to organization. There are, however, universal standards that pertain to setting prioritization in patient care, as described below:
Patient need assessment – involves a comprehensive medical review of patients to ascertain the degree of their symptoms. This also involves emotional state assessment, levels of pain, and other medical conditions.
Evaluating Acuity – evaluating the severity of a patient’s condition is necessary to help prioritize nursing care. This immunizes any risks patients may face from the failure of quick medical attention.
Collaboration in decision making – leaders need to promote inter-disciplinary teamwork to ensure that the teams agree on the orders of prioritization and working modalities for issuing nursing care. This practice will ensure efficient handovers and exchange of services amongst different teams (Leadership Matters, 2020).
- Prioritization can be important in the following scenarios:
- During emergency triages
- During medical administrations
- While addressing staff shortage
- During discharges
- While issuing emergency responses
Delegation in Nursing
The concept of delegation involves transferring roles, tasks, and responsibilities among healthcare team members. Individuals who accept roles assigned to them in these scenarios need experts with the correct qualification form to take up tasks (Gilroy, 2019).
Delegation assists with workload management and, thus, time management. Individuals who receive or act on delegated tasks can learn additional skills from their roles. For instance, a senior nursing officer taking up delegated tasks from their manager gets an opportunity to act as the leader and thus build on their competencies. Delegation can also assist with time management as the delegating officer can participate in other activities to save time. The delegation also ensures the continuity of services even without critical staff (Reid et al., 2020).
There are legal and ethical considerations associated with delegation practices in nursing. The considerations exist to ensure that patient safer is a priority and that the rights of healthcare workers and their patients are protected at all costs. Some of the legal and ethical considerations are described below:
Nurse Practice Act – this helps to describe the overall scope of nursing works and speculates the legal boundaries beyond which nurses can mandate delegated tasks
License sure and certifications – it is necessary to ensure that nurses participate in tasks that they are licensed to perform.
Patient welling – this needs o be put into place before the delegation or acceptance of delegated tasks. The skills and competencies needed to handle the task must be evident to ensure that the patient’s safety is guaranteed.
The delegation criterion ensures that the nursing delegation task is carried out effectively and promotes collaboration and coordination. Clear communication plays a focal role in the delegation of tasks. The tasks and responsibilities need to be communicated transparently, thus eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding. Task selection and expectations of the delegation exercise need to be done in accordance with the Nurse’s abilities. Also, the supervisor or leader must support the Nurses during this time. Other critical practices during this time are not limited to documentation, a sense of accountability, and promoting trust and confidence (Leadership Matters, 2020).
Reflection
The Implication of Topic to Nursing
The studies of prioritization, delegation, and Leadership in nursing provide a clear vision and some essential elements leaders play in nursing. There have been discussions of effective leadership styles, qualities, and desirable characteristics. For instance, a leader’s vision inspires other Nurses to achieve their goals. Likewise, the environment they help to set up and how they delegate or help prioritize duties translate to the best quality care for the patients.
Personal Reflection
I draw much inspiration from effective leadership styles. Having worked with and seen good leaders who transformed their departments and organizations, it is evident that an optimal form of Leadership provides an ambient working environment and thus translates to quality. Leaders who are inspirational motivate the workforce, who in turn translate their motivation to productive work. In my workstations before, I have witnessed this first hand.
My clinical experience has taught me and affirmed that delegation needs to be procedural and well-articulated. For instance, having been in a scenario where I am tasked to lead a shift for a duration, it is overwhelming playing the focal role and the central force. One has to be a good decision-maker and possess exemplary Leadership to resolve problems during the shift. My main take is that compassion, diversity, and willingness to learn are crucial stages of a leers development.
This research has reaffirmed my beliefs on the quality of a true leader. The autocratic form of Leadership could be better in a nursing setup, and it takes optimized transformational and servant Leadership to provide the desired guidance and compassion in patient care. Therefore, prioritization and delegation are crucial roles that leaders need to help Nurses with to ensure that work operates smoothly every day.
Conclusion
This work has reviewed the essence of Leadership in nursing. Overall, it has been determined that leaders in nursing ought to show the right kind of compassion and transformation to succeed. Qualities of good leaders are eve indent in their day-to-day practice, and this goes a long way in shaping the organization’s objectives toward success. Leaders’ roles, prioritization, and delegation are centric on molding the work environment to offer quality patient care. This is because leaders need the correct form of support, and it is only possible for them to get it if they cascade downwards with efficient communication. For the future, leadership lessons need to be paramount for all nurses. Also, there needs to be clear documentation and curriculum to guide the process of delegation and prioritization as core components of nursing leadership.
References
Gilroy, R. (2019). General Practice Nurse Leadership for Quality Programme 2019. Practice Nursing, 30(4), 199–200. https://doi.org/10.12968/pnur.2019.30.4.199
Leadership matters. (2020). Nursing Management, 51(7), 7–7. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.numa.0000669080.83540.4a
Reid, R. A., Fulcher, J. H., & Smith, H. L. (2020). Hospital-health care plan affiliations: considerations for strategy design. Health Care Management Review, 11(4), 53–61. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004010-198601140-00006
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