Nursing Leaders

Nursing managers and leaders play a critical role in influencing the safety and quality of healthcare services on offer as well as the business of healthcare institutions. The managers and leaders individually strive towards influencing the behavior of the rest of the nursing personnel to provide direct, professional and individualized nursing care. Thus, although both of them play a mediated role, their responsibilities and style of accomplishing tasks within a health organization may differ. In practice, nursing managers and leaders are likely to employ significantly different approaches in identifying and exploiting resources within an institution and in resolving issues that may be threatening the operations of a healthcare institution.

To begin with, a nursing manager is likely employ management tasks such as budgeting and planning in an effort to ensure adequate budgetary allocations and to streamline the workforce organization efforts. This may involve effective management of the financial resources to ensure nursing personnel recruitment programs have adequate finances to attract and recruit a competent nursing staff. The manager can also spearhead budgetary adjustments aimed at setting aside additional financial incentives for the nursing workforce in an effort to minimize or eradicate staff turn-over. With regard to planning, the nursing manager is likely to determine the short-term and long-term human resource needs and align them with the overall objectives of the healthcare organization. This may lead to subsequent hiring of additional nurses to make up for the high turnover rates and building of strategies aimed at combating nurse turn-over to guarantee realization of the set objectives (Huber,

This may involve effective mobilization of the available nursing staff and review of the responsibilities durations for the nurses to the recommended levels to avoid straining the workforce. Consequently, reorganization will help redistribute nursing functions among the available staff, thereby averting high personnel turnover due to overload. Similarly, the manager is likely to employ the staffing function to identify and hire qualified nursing personnel to fill out the understaffed nursing levels. This will significantly reduce individual workload and enable nurses to adequately address the unique needs of their clients, thereby facilitating delivery of quality and personalized nursing care to patients. Thirdly, the nursing manager is likely to employ the controlling function to assess work results against established performance standards in an effort to determine the effects of nurse turnover and shortage on the organization. In the event of significant discrepancies, the manager may resort to such corrective actions as introducing incentives to motivate and retain the existing staff or attract highly qualified nursing personnel. Therefore, in addressing staff turnover and shortage, a nursing manager is likely to employ strategies aimed at coping with the presenting complexities as opposed to dealing with change (Jadvar,