Nursing Leadership Case Study

The role of the nurse has always been that of the first point of contact for the patient to the clinical care team. As outlined by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (2016) the role of the nurse is to advocate, educate, liaise with, and provide adequate and appropriate clinical care to the patient. Additionally, the nurse represents the statistical majority of the Australian clinical team, outnumbering medical doctors at a ratio of almost 4:1 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013) which is consistent throughout all sectors of healthcare. Therefore, the nurse has a powerful and tangible effect on policy and the outcomes for patients in the clinical setting. The connection between results and leadership has been known since the early

An analysis of recent literature on the effect of healthcare leadership revealed that nursing leadership was the primary barrier to establishing best practices in the clinical setting (2011). Furthermore, nursing leadership is shown to define clinical organisational culture, collaboration, and lateral violence which are all shown to impact patient outcomes indirectly (2015). A meta-analysis of 20 individual studies revealed nursing units with reported poor leadership had significantly higher adverse events, including the incidence of urinary tract infections, pneumonia, and higher patient mortality. Comparatively, nursing units with reported strong leadership had significantly less adverse events, including fewer medication errors, falls, pressure areas, and lower patient mortality (2013). Therefore, a strong correlation between effective nursing leadership and improved patient safety is shown to exist and vice

It relies on a paradigm of quid pro quo, reward for success and punishment for failure. Rewards can include praise, compensation, and recognition. Punishment could include a verbal scolding, demotion, or extra work. Therefore, subordinates are motivated primarily by their own self-interest. Leaders using this model are focused on setting expectations, measuring performance, and rewarding or punishing subordinates accordingly. The advantages of transactional leadership are in its clear policies, structure, and efficiency. The disadvantages of transactional leadership include stifled creativity, impaired initiative, and inflexibility of the organisation. Furthermore, reward incentive models are consistently shown to be ineffective in the long term (Gneezy et al.,