Question

1-Define clinical leadership and explain your preferred style of leadership; give reasons why. 2-What is the role of the nurse manager in a given system? How would you apply your skills to help new nurses or employees meet their own professional development? Give specific examples. 3-Discuss the issues about having millennials as working nurses and debate their participation in the nursing field, currently and projected.

Answer 1

1. Clinical leadership is defined as the process of influencing point-of-care innovation and improvement in both organizational processes and individual care practices to achieve quality and safety of care outcomes. McCausland noted that new interdisciplinary models of care that cross traditional boundaries of ambulatory, inpatient, and community settings need credible clinical leaders. Thomas and Roussel⁶ noted that clinical leadership is about clinicians augmenting care for safety and quality by using innovation and improvement. This places the opportunity for health care leadership at the clinical level within the realm of each direct provider of care, especially nurses who are at the direct care level. They stated “There is a need for a more programmatic, strategic approach to clinical leadership, because the United States’ ailing health care system is in urgent need of reform”.Thus, clinical leadership needs targeted preparation. My preferred style of leadership is Democratic leadership.Through a democratic leadership style, nurse leaders include other nurses in the decision-making process during procedural changes. Clinical nurse leaders collect the ideas and opinions of their staff, then distill them in hopes of finding practical ways to improve the quality of care that they are delivering. In order to maximize the effectiveness of democratic leadership, clinical nurse leaders should advise their staff to develop both professional and casual partnerships with one another, allowing open expression of disagreement regarding patient goals, progress and health outcomes. Rather than designating select members of the team to solve problems on their own, each available nurse should be offered an opportunity to participate by contributing their own individual expertise to clinical processes. But unlike transformational leadership, the democratic leadership style generally leaves final decisions up to the leader, restricting how extensively the group can impact decisions. This allows nurse leaders to maintain control over the decision-making process while still offering employees the chance to have their feedback acknowledged by their leaders.

2.Nurse leaders should note that a democratically led organization may generate a workplace environment that is founded upon the ideals of a select group of highly vocal individuals. This could lead to the timid nurses feeling less valued than their more vocal colleagues, leaving them unmotivated to express their opinions. This could be especially harmful to an organization if the nurses with reserved personalities have critical insights to offer, but instead choose to remain quiet to avoid conflict. Regardless of the slight flaws in this leadership style, an educated and experienced democratic leader can be highly effective at harnessing the power of employee thoughts, opinions, and ideas to coordinate successful policies and programs. To remedy this, clinical nurse leaders must actively solicit input from every employee who may be impacted by the decision being made. For example, if an acute care department is proposing changes to the patient release procedures, the nurse leader should solicit every nurse who is involved with that process, as they will likely want to contribute their own thoughts on how to optimize that area of the department. Cultural Awareness, Professionalism, Attention to Detail, Critical Thinking ,Compassion, Time Management and Communication, these skills help new nurses or employees meet their own professional development.

3. Some characteristics of the Millennial generation include: Growing up with an extreme affinity for and comfort with technology , Tremendous, positive attention and influence from parents and teachers , Structured, supervised childhoods with very little unscheduled time , Unusual respect for authority and acceptance of ‘the rules’ and Belief in the collective power and positive influence of their group.This group has never known an unwired life and often multitasks. They have an unprecedented ability to remain connected, and have a drive to communicate with friends and family. Laptop computers with wireless connections to the Internet, social networking sites, cell phones with Bluetooth headsets and text messaging, Nintendo and Xbox video games and beepers are as normal to Millennials as Howdy Doody, television and the hula hoop were to Boomers. They are constantly instant messaging or texting friends and family, taking photos with cell phone cameras, and showcasing their interests on social networking forums like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. They have been accustomed to influencing their parents to purchase ever better technology and have never (until recently) seen the economy shrink or fail. Most have led highly structured lives, with undue influence from their hovering parents, sometimes called ‘helicopter’ parents.It will not be too far into the future when Millennial RNs will take leadership positions by sheer dint of their numbers in the workforce. What we offer now as a way to bring them into the profession in a nurturing and careful way will greatly influence how they behave as leaders. As previously mentioned, the delay of the older workers exiting the nursing workforce should not impede the progress of Millennial RNs in taking on greater responsibility and leadership roles within the profession. We have been given the gift and opportunity to set succession planning into place, and health care employers would be wise to set out well-defined career tracks for Millennial RNs entering the workforce. This progression toward career growth could enhance retention and provide a smooth transition of power in coming decades. Their generational values fit well with nursing precepts, and their comfort with technology could enhance practice in ways we cannot even imagine. Now is the time to engage the minds and hearts of Millennials and help them help us create Nursing’s future.