ESSU Leadership Essay

Part I South Shore University Hospital (SSUH) opened up an emergency short stay unit (ESSU) seven years ago. This unit is a branch of the emergency department that holds patients that are admitted to the hospital before they go to another floor. Due to this unit experiencing so much movement on a regular basis, there is a lot of room for error and strong leadership is needed. With this, the ESSU management team follows a complexity leadership model. This leadership style is positive and promotes learning, as well as a strong bond between employees and leadership. The complexity leadership style is one that highlights working as a team and constant growth, rather than authoritarianism (Crowell & Boynton, 2020). There are four concepts of the Complexity Leadership Model: leadership knowledge, leadership style, personal being and awareness, and action (Crowell & Boynton, 2020). Nurse leaders within SSUH, especially the managers and assistant managers in the ESSU, are regularly sharing knowledge and ready to learn new things themselves. The ESSU leadership team approaches their staff with a style that is transformational, as it is collaborative in nature and focuses on personal being. This is a benefit of working within a small hospital, only having 300 beds, there is more of a personal aspect to facilitate work on a day-to-day basis. This enables the sharing of supplies, resources, expertise, and knowledge from unit to unit.

SSUH has linear organization as there is a direct hierarchy of leadership, the higher the chain of command, the more linear the leadership becomes. However, complexity organization in that chaos and change is the one constant of the floor, especially being part of the emergency department. In an ever changing environment, the only aspect that is both stable and dependable is the staff and