Introduction
Healthcare leadership and management are critical pieces of the healthcare system as they directly affect the provision of medical services to patients (Crowell & Boynton, 2020). This essay offers a comprehensive view of various aspects of primary nursing and functional nursing paradigms, including evaluating critical definitions, key principles, roles of leaders/managers, and their respective implications on healthcare service delivery. Before drawing any comparison, this study explores the broader aspect of leadership and management in healthcare.
Role of Leadership and Management in Healthcare
The leadership and management in healthcare are directly responsible for supervising teams, establishing organizational goals, and ensuring efficient utilization of resources to actualize the best healthcare outcome for the patients (Crowell & Boynton, 2020). In this rapidly evolving discipline, visionary leadership is crucial for overcoming challenges and fostering the quality of the healthcare services being delivered in an institution. Effective leadership is the key to healthcare service delivery, representing the heart of organizational success. Leaders work in collaboration with teams to govern the healthcare units and oversee the implementation of strategic plans of the healthcare institutions to achieve the desired performance outcome (Crowell & Boynton, 2020). In addition, leaders in healthcare setups are mandated to create a conducive working environment for their staff, make informed decisions, and observe ethical and regulatory standards.
Primary Nursing and Functional Nursing
Primary and functional nursing are the most common models within the delivery of healthcare services. These models define how healthcare institutions are structured. As a result, understanding their distinctive features is the key determining factor in the success of healthcare leaders and managers. In primary nursing, a nurse is exclusively tasked with the care coordination and delivery to a specific subset of patients (Pérez-Francisco et al., 2020). Regarding leadership and management, leaders in primary nursing promote nurses to independent roles where they can be guided and supported. In addition, continuity of care and therapeutic relationships between nurses and patients are highly valued in primary nursing. Regarding implications on healthcare service delivery, primary nursing effectively enhances healthcare delivery by enabling individualized care plans, improving communication, and fostering patient satisfaction.
In functional nursing, however, nurses are allocated assignments based on their areas of specialization (Aydin et al., 2024). Specializing in this context means that nurses can only perform given functions based on their knowledge and proficiency. Regarding leadership, healthcare leaders in functional nursing supervise workflow and ensure staff members perform their respective professional roles. According to Aydin et al. (2024), the adoption of specialization as the primary model of operation positions functional nursing as the most effective model for fostering upbeat healthcare service delivery as it focuses on promotinficiency, optimal utilization of staff expertise, and efficiency.
Learning Objectives from Practicum Experiences
- Familiarization with Institutional Philosophy and Policies: In primary and functional nursing care, nurses must understand institutional values to provide patient-centered leadership; applying the institutional mission and philosophy in management is essential in enhancing the quality of care in both models.
- Knowledge of Ward Goals and Objectives: In primary and functional nursing care, nurses must align personal goals with ward objectives, which is essential for effective nursing practice. For management, implementing strategies that foster ward objectives and a goal-oriented and collaborative workplace environment is an amount of success in healthcare service delivery.
- Proficiency in Procedural Manual Utilization: Nurses must understand their professional roles, maintain a standardized quality of care, and observe established rules and regulations in primary and functional nursing care. In addition, applying knowledge in day-to-day activities is vital for nurses to promote consistency and efficiency in both healthcare settings.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Primary Nursing Care
The primary nursing model offers several advantages regarding healthcare service delivery. First, it contributes to patient-centered care through individual support, which improves its (qualityérez-Francisco et al., 2020). Secondly, the primary nursing system encourages better nurse-patient relationships through continuity of care, leading to mutual trust between providers and their patients. Thirdly, the primary nursing model fosters job satisfaction among nurses because it enables them to achieve autonomy and responsibility, essential for job satisfaction and professional fulfillment.
In addition, the primary nursing model develops a relationship of trust among caregivers and patients, thereby creating a more robust and fruitful healthcare outcome. However, staffing shortages may negatively impact healthcare service delivery due to increased workload (Pérez-Francisco et al., 2020). Due to a lack of specialization, regular training is necessary to keep staff up-to-date with emerging issues in healthcare, which increases the cost of operation in the primary nursing model.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Functional Nursing
The benefits of the functional nursing model come from the number of tasks that can be shared, the specialization of skills, and the cost-effectiveness (Parreira et al., 2021). This is because the model facilitates effective task management by allocating separate duties and responsibilities to specialized positions, which increases the healthcare delivery system’s efficiency. The adoption of specialization enables the introduction of unique skills for each nurse. This ensures that she becomes an expert in her designated area, leading to authority and proficiency in patient care. The functional nursing model is cost-effective since resources are better utilized and, as a result, leads to an innovative and budget-conscious technique in healthcare delivery.
Functional nursing is not, however, free of its weaknesses. For instance, specializing entails separation of responsibilities, which could disrupt the care process in a functional healthcare setting (Parreira et al., 2021). Communication difficulties can also be a significant problem, especially in multidisciplinary scenarios, which may trigger management challenges regarding team formation and task allocation. Additionally, there is the possibility of a depreciation of satisfaction in nurses, as autonomy significantly contributes to professional achievement. Identifying the advantages and disadvantages should be the first step when considering functional nursing in practice.
Conclusion
The analysis of primary nursing v.s. Functional nursing shows that both setups have different healthcare delivery models, each with its pros and cons. Leadership and management are among the critical factors in fostering quality patient care, employee satisfaction, and organizational achievement in primary and functional nursing care. Based on this study, the adoption of specialization, cost-effectiveness, and resource allocation efficiency renders functional nursing the most effective model for ensuring improved healthcare service delivery.
References
Aydin, A., Serpici, A., Şimşek, P., Gürsoy, A., Çilingir, D., Ertürk Yavuz, M., & Candaş Altinbaş, B. (2024). The data analysis of the functional health patterns model for nursing care plans. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 1-8.
Crowell, D. M., & Boynton, B. (2020). Complexity leadership: nursing’s role in health care delivery. FA Davis.
Parreira, P., Santos-Costa, P., Neri, M., Marques, A., Queirós, P., & Salgueiro-Oliveira, A. (2021). Work methods for nursing care delivery. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(4), 2088.
Pérez-Francisco, D. H., Duarte-Clíments, G., del Rosario-Melián, J. M., Gómez-Salgado, J., Romero-Martín, M., & Sánchez-Gómez, M. B. (2020, January). Influence of workload on primary care nurses’ health and burnout, patients’ safety, and quality of care: Integrative review. In Healthcare (Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 12). MDPI.
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