A Nurse Leader’s Effective Characteristics

Subject: Nursing
Pages: 3
Words: 929
Reading time:
4 min
Study level: College

Introduction

Organizational analysis plays a fundamental role in the stabilization of the healthcare sector. The process facilitates the appraisal of the healthcare facility’s growth, operations, and environment. The main focus is to provide a detailed description of the center’s structure and design. The efficiency of nursing care provided relies on the type of leadership (Kiwanuka et al., 2021). The analysis seeks to explore and shadow nurse leaders and managers. Nurse leaders promote their staff members’ productivity, while managers are more skilled in ensuring productivity within the organization. Communication is essential in nursing as it ensures effective coordination among all involved medical stakeholders.

Nurse Manager

Kevin Anderson, a registered nurse, is the lead nurse at the pediatric intensive care unit at Mayo Hospital, specializing in cancer, cardiovascular, and heart conditions. The unit deals with nursing children below the age of twelve with severe infections that require extensive care. Anderson graduated with his bachelor of science in nursing from the University of Rochester. Upon completing his studies, he started as a floor nurse at Mayo Hospital in 2006. In 2013 he moved up to serve as an AC and became the lead nurse in 2017. As the hospital nurse leader, Anderson has to organize and attend various managerial meetings, including the CNO meetings and annual lead sessions. Among his key roles, Anderson creates staff schedules, monitors attendance to duties, and formulates and implements hospital policies. He is responsible for recruiting new nurses and dismissing staff members who performing poorly. Anderson also coordinates with the unit tutors to provide continued medical education to the nursing fraternity to ensure they are updated on the new guidelines, procedures, and equipment. Anderson is also PCCN certified with a yearly renewal and eighty CEUs. Anderson is an active member of nursing professional organizations in the USA. Specifically, he is a registered member of the American Nurses Association and the Academy of neonatal nursing. During his free time, Anderson mostly reads from the American journal of Nursing. Sometimes during the year, he attends sharp volunteer opportunities to enhance his knowledge and skills.

Nurse Leader

Anderson can be termed a great and effective leader who ensures high productivity through unit growth, teamwork, and exemplary conflict-resolution skills. As per his leadership methodologies, it can be concluded that he uses the situational leadership style. This approach is used by leaders who adopt different governance mechanisms as per the prevailing circumstances (Alloubani et al., 2019). Anderson displays a calm manner of handling conflicts and coordinating junior and senior staff members. He deploys various evaluation criteria to ensure his policies are adopted. This may include auditing charts which he uses to verify that the correct procedures and chartings are adhered to. Such an appraisal is effective but has two main limitations. The method fails to assess hands-on nursing skills and does not incorporate computer information. Anderson is responsible for balancing his staff members as per the shift to meet the required nurse-to-patient ratio of 1:4. Before handing over the ward to others; he checks the report book for any unique information or requirements.

When assigning patients, he considers the nurses’ acuity and experience. Patient allocation is done carefully to avoid giving one nurse more patients that require extensive care. Such an allocation method is effective as it considers multiple factors to ensure clients receive the best care and prevent draining the nurses. Anderson ensures he tries to honor the staff’s wishes and balance experienced and non-experienced personnel when preparing the nurses’ schedule. Despite not having a standard duty allocation protocol, the scheduling criteria are effective and promote productivity.

One of Anderson’s remarkable skills as a lead nurse is flexibility and creativity. Occasionally unexpected eventualities such as sick calls and staffing changes occur, but he can resolve issues swiftly. He informs the staffing officer of such occurrences, who will assign a floor nurse to cover the absence. In some cases, Anderson has served as a floor nurse to fill spaces left when one nurse fails to get to work due to unavoidable situations. Anderson has excellent skills in addressing and managing incidents within the facility. For instance, in case a patient or family member becomes aggressive. He can calm them down and resolve the situation without any problems.

Communication

Anderson possesses excellent communication skills required for effective leadership. As the lead nurse, he holds several meetings and interactions with junior and senior members. However, it is notable that Anderson has some shortcomings as he sometimes fails to come to an understanding when dealing with other unit managers. Sometimes he becomes emotional when dealing with floor nurses who fail to behave as per the set standards. When interacting with his fellow lead nurses, Anderson communicates respectfully and kindly. A nurse leader should be a good communicator and motivator (Cummings et al., 2018). Anderson always expresses his satisfaction and appreciation when a member performs well. When in a dilemma, he seeks help from others well suited to handling the condition. Finally, Anderson is a supportive member of the nursing fraternity; he is a good listener and welcomes criticism.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that organizational appraisals serve as evaluators of the efficiency of a facility. In the healthcare sector, for instance, it assesses the facility’s capacity to deliver quality care and the efficiency of its workforce. In the nursing fraternity, for example, the analysis describes its leadership. Nurse leaders and managers play crucial roles in offering guidance and ensuring productivity at work. Such personnel ought to be qualified and certified to serve as leaders and they should have the required skills, such as effective communication.

References

Alloubani, A., Akhu-Zaheya, L., Abdelhafiz, I. M., & Almatari, M. (2019). Leadership styles’ influence on the quality of nursing care. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 32(6), 1033-1033.

Cummings, G. G., Tate, K., Lee, S., Wong, C. A., Paananen, T., Micaroni, S. P., & Chatterjee, G. E. (2018). Leadership styles and outcome patterns for the nursing workforce and work environment: A systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 85, 19-60.

Kiwanuka, F., Nanyonga, R. C., Sak‐Dankosky, N., Muwanguzi, P. A., & Kvist, T. (2021). Nursing leadership styles and their impact on intensive care unit quality measures: An integrative review. Journal of Nursing Management, 29(2), 133-142.