Essay On Nurse Leaders

The increase health care demands, complexity, advancement of technology and knowledge explosion had challenged the nurse’s knowledge, competence, commitments and interpersonal skills. In healthcare industry nurses are required in each level of the healthcare system as they are constantly connected with people and they have various role and responsibilities. To be able to lead the nurses do need to have knowledge and skills in management. Apparent nurse leaders would need to have the leadership skills of getting people to get the work done in a professional manner. In addition to that, nurse leaders need to be proactive leaders, who clearly understand the organizations visions, missions and goals as well as getting their down liners to work

The concept of leadership is much wider than the management, though managers should also be leaders. Management focused on the accomplishment of the organizational goals whereas leadership occurs whenever one person attempts to influence the behaviour of a group or an individual to achieve the goals. These goals many not necessary be congruent with the organizations goals, it can just be a personal or for the goals of others. In order to be nurse leader, there are three key competencies that need to be developed. First, the nurse leader needs to have the ability to identify and understand the situation that he or she wants to influence. Secondly, the nurse leader need to adapt to the current situation and allow him or her behaviour and other resources to close the gap and identifies what needs to be achieved. Finally the third competency is on communication. According to Fagerstrom & Salmela (2010), regardless of how good the leader is able to identify and adapt but if he or she is unable to communicate effectively, most likely the leader would not be able to achieve the goals. Effective leaders will be able to get people to work together, engaging them to effectively pursuit shared goals, and such as delivering excellent care, planning cost saving and even challenging the ethics of a new designed policy (Wong & Cummings,

Teamwork, helping each team members to give their best effort is a crucial role for a nurse leader. As a leader, he or she needs to set clear standards, so that the team will know precisely what is expected from them in terms of work, quality and safety. The nurse leader’s role is to strive to uphold high but practical standards. The team members need to have clear understanding on ‘why’ and ‘what’ they need to do to achieve the objectives and it is the nurse leader’s role to ensure explanation is given to the team to gather their support. It is important to get the team members involvements by getting their ideas and opinions. Team members who are involved in decision making will more likely have a stake in achieving goals. However, the team need to understand that the responsibility for the final decision will be made by the nurse