Leadership and Management Attributes

To: Managers

From: Department director

Date: 9^th July 2021

Subject: Leadership and Management Attributes

Dear Managers,

Greetings! As you all know, leadership is an important role that should be taken seriously for the well-being of our patients and staff. Leadership in nursing incorporates an environment with a clear vision where the team needs to be empowered and motivated. As manager overseeing the operations of nurses in your respective departments, you should set a good example and have some unique attributes so that leadership and management can be effective. One of the attributes that you should have is integrity. Healthcare professionals must have the integrity to ensure that they put the interests of the patients first and adhere to the codes of personal and professional ethics (Whitehead et al., 2010). Integrity also improves patient outcomes because the healthcare professional’s adherence to professional ethics ensures that the patient’s interests are respected and met. The second attribute that you should have is courage. As a leader in the healthcare profession, you will be expected to take risks. For instance, you may be required to decide how nurses should treat a patient. Such an instance could occur when a patient needs a medication that could have severe side effects but improves the patient’s health. The nurses look up to you to make the best decision, and without the courage to do it, the patient’s health could worsen. Courage, therefore, improves patient outcomes by ensuring that decisions relating to their health are made fast to save their lives.

The third attribute is optimism. In the healthcare profession, sometimes the work could be difficult and include a range of crises that could sometimes make the healthcare professional discouraged (Whitehead et al., 2010). You should ensure that the discouragement does not kill your morale and the morale of those looking up to you for advice. It would be best if you focused on seeing the problem as an opportunity to improve the services offered to our patients. Optimism enhances patient outcomes by ensuring that healthcare professionals concentrate on their work and develop the best solution to address issues affecting a patient. The fourth attribute is perseverance. As a leader in the healthcare field, you may encounter some challenges that push you to your limits, such as the death of many patients within a short time (Whitehead et al., 2010). You should persist and continue doing your best despite such challenges. Perseverance improves patient outcomes by ensuring that healthcare professionals do not give up on treating the patient until they get better. The other attribute is the ability to manage stress. Managing nurses may be stressful, particularly when they start making mistakes that affect the hospital’s reputation. You may respond incorrectly by either shouting at the nurse or suspending them. These actions may be a bad move because the patients, depending on the nurse, may not be willing to be assisted by another nurse. Therefore, you must ensure you are continuously composed and cope with stress positively. Managing stress improves patient outcomes by preventing medical errors that could occur due to stress.

Following the incident in our hospital, we are taking various steps to collect data regarding the incident. The first step is interviewing the manager who reported the patient’s death to get the facts behind the incident. The manager must provide information on the nurse attending to the patient and the patient’s medical history. The second step will be interviewing the nurse who was listening to the patient at the time the patient died. The nurse will be required to explain her actions and why she felt her measures were appropriate at that time. The third step will be reviewing the nurse’s files to check for potential client abuse. The fourth step will be having a joint meeting with all managers to decide on what to do regarding the nurse and the family that has lost their family member due to the actions of one of our staff members. The last step will be presenting our decision to the Chief Nursing Officer through the department director.

In the current healthcare sector, transformational leadership is embraced to ensure leaders empower healthcare professionals to trust them and work towards achieving the organization’s goals. In the present scenario, the transformational leadership style may influence the investigating of this professional nurse colleague who reports to one of our unit managers due to buffering. In transformational leadership, nursing leaders function as advocates or buffers for the nurses to protect them, nurses, from external and internal work pressures. According to Roussel et al. (2015), buffering protects practicing nurses from the healthcare organization, external health system factors, top administrators, other employees and supervisors, and themselves when their behaviors risk their careers. The unit manager in this scenario may protect the professional nurse colleagues by justifying their actions. The manager may defend the nurse so that she is not fired to avoid putting pressure on the other professional nurses in the unit. This is based on the argument by Roussel et al. (2015) that professional nurses avoid having more responsibilities delegated to them if they are already under stress or pressure. It is anticipated that the current scenario has already put professional nurses in the unit under pressure and stress to avoid making another medical mistake and repeating the incident. Additional pressure may result in another incident, and the unit manager may feel that such incidents are putting his job at risk.

I call upon you to cooperate in the investigation process to ensure that the deceased’s family gets justice. It is in the best interest of each of you to collaborate because our hospital’s reputation is at stake. Also, we may lose patients if the deceased patient’s family informs the public about the negligence of one of our nurses. I also call upon you to consider the leadership and management attributes suggested in this memo to improve leadership in this hospital and ensure that your actions yield a positive outcome. I shall continue updating you on the case’s progress and reach you if any information is required from you. I would also like to request you avoid disclosing any information about the investigation to other staff to ensure that there is no internal or external interference so that we can take the shortest time possible to address the issue. I would also request you avoid putting your interests first when addressing this issue.

References

Roussel, L. A., Harris, J. L., & Thomas, T. (2015). Management and leadership for nurse administrators. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Whitehead, D. K., Weiss, S. A., & Tappen, R. M. (2010). Essentials of nursing leadership and management. F A Davis Company.

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Leadership and Management Attributes
Competency
Evaluate leadership and management attributes that support critical decisions for nursing practice.

Leadership and Management Attributes

Scenario

You have recently started a position as a department director with five managers reporting to you. Earlier today, one of your managers said that a client expired on her unit. She suspects that a factor that may have contributed to the client’s demise may be related to the actions of a nurse on her team. This nurse has several notes in her personnel file that reflect potential client abuse. You and the nurse manager are concerned that this sentinel event must be investigated.

Later in the day, the Chief Nursing Officer asks you to speak to new nurse managers to share leadership attributes with the plan of enhancing their leadership skills. You see an opportunity to combine the client’s situation with a bad outcome due to the alleged influence of one of the nurses while building information to share this real-life situation with new nurse leaders.

Instructions

As a follow-up to the investigation of the client’s unexpected death, generate an internal memo to your managers to reflect leadership and management attributes and include steps taken to investigate this unfortunate situation. As you create this memo, keep in mind that you should have:

At least five leadership and management attributes for nurse leaders, as well as how they can improve client outcomes.
Steps you would take to ensure the collection of data regarding this incident.
Describe how transformational leadership style may influence the process of investigating this professional nurse colleague who reports to one of your unit managers.