Positive Impact of Nursing Leadership - Research Paper Example

? Article Analysis – Positive Impact of Nursing Leadership with respect to Psychosocial work Environment A healthy working environment will always have a positive impact on the performance of the employees. Right from the service industries to manufacturing industries, the above phenomenon is universally applicable to different type of sectors. Building up of a positive and healthy working environment encompasses number of factors, such as employee satisfaction obtained through work recognition, promotions, benefits, incentives, etc. Among the various elements, one of the most essential components to enhance the performance of the employees would be, identifying leadership style components. Recent studies had revealed the fact that, some of the leadership components had a greater and positive influence on the psychosocial working environment. This paper will analyze the article, Nursing Leadership Style and Psychosocial Work Environment written by Terry Malloy and Barbara Penprase. This article mainly focuses on the service industry, and a group of nurses are taken as sample group to conduct the research through questionnaires. Among the industrial sectors, the healthcare sector plays a vital role in saving the lives of the people. Next to the physicians, the nurses are considered to be the life savers, as they attend to the patients very keenly and they assist the doctors in proceeding with the proper treatment to the patients. Due to their extensive work, nurses are prone to mental stress, job repetition, boredom, etc., which have a negative impact in their performances. Hence various researches have been conducted to explore the ways, whereby the performance of the nurses can be enhanced, resulting in increased job satisfaction. One such research article would be, Nursing Leadership Style and Psychosocial Work Environment. “This study examines the relationship between leadership style and the psychosocial work environment of registered nurses.”(Malloy & Penprase, 2010). Thus, the overall background research highlights the fact, that transformational leadership style exhibited by leaders in the healthcare setting can have a positive impact on the job satisfaction of the nurses/workers. This part of the paper will focus on how the findings from the research study/article may be applied to nursing process. Basically nursing process can be described as a modified version of scientific process. It is mainly utilized in the medical field to assess the needs of the patients and to formulate a course of action whereby the problems of the patients can be addressed and solved respectively. “Developed by Ida Jean Orlando in 1958, this method is used by nurses to balance out the usage of scientific evidence and personal interpretation when diagnosing and treating.” (“An In-Depth Look into the Nursing Process”, n. d). Thus, the nursing process includes five major steps namely assessing the problems of the patients, diagnosing the issues, planning the course of action to address the problem, implementing the solution effectively and evaluating the results. From the above sentence, it is obvious that the nursing process involves five major steps in attending to the problems of the patients. However in the article, it has been revealed that there is an effective correlation between the healthy working environment and the nursing process, which also impacts the well being of the patients and their health. Moreover, it is very much apparent from the article that the entire nursing process mainly depends on the various dimensions of the psychosocial environment. Generally, the process of nursing can be described as a cyclic that can come to an end at any of the five stages if the problem is solved. Above all, the nursing process not only focuses on attending the physical needs of the patients but also attend to their social and emotional needs considerably. Hence, the article very well highlights the positive relationship between the contingent reward leadership with that of the psychosocial work environment which has a strong influence in attending to the physical and emotional needs of the patients. Thus, the nursing process which involves more of interpersonal and collaborative skills extended by the nurses will defiently needs a strong background of sound working environment and sense of job satisfaction. Hence, some of the psychosocial dimensions highlighted in the article such as social responsibility, justice and respect, imbibing the essence of working, commitment, extra effort, motivation, implementing innovative techniques, etc., all have positive impacts on the nursing process. This part of the paper will focus on how the findings from the research study/article may be utilized by practicing nurses. The effective nurse practicing can be identified with the strong and integrated nurse-patient relationship. The above can be attained through the way of creating a holistic working environment for practicing nurses. In order to build up an effective holistic working environment, it is vital to identify the transactional leadership style components which can be positively correlated with the psychosocial environment. Thus, the findings from the article state that there is a significant relationship between the transformational leadership components such as intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, job satisfaction, etc., with that of the psychosocial work environment. The effective build up of the holistic psychosocial organizational environment synchronize positively with practicing nurses. Apart from the above, the article also depicts the concept of transactional leaderships and how it relates with the positive and healthy working environment, which ultimately results in the enhanced performance of the practicing nurses. Thus, some of the transactional components such as contingent reward, and exchange of positions are directly linked in creating a holistic environment. For example, job rotation is a phenomenon where every individual is allotted with different types of duties periodically. This greatly enhances the performance and creates a sort of job responsibility among the practicing nurses ultimately resulting in building up a healthy working environment. Job satisfaction, job enrichment and job security are some of the other transactional leadership components that have a significant relationship with the organizational culture thereby elevating the motivational level of the nurses. Thus, this part of the paper highlighted on how the findings from the article may be implemented by the practicing nurses. The research article also focuses on some of the ethical issues that are being faced by nurses. It goes without saying that nursing professional is strictly bound to ethical and moral principles. It has been implicitly described in the article that the practicing nurses should strictly maintain code of conduct and stick on to the moral principles thereby creating an effective interpersonal relationships with the patients. Thus, some of the psychosocial work environment dimensions such as justice, respect to the patients, maintaining the confidentiality of the patients’ medical information, etc., are some of the ethical issues that are implied in the research article. The other major factor that contributes to the ethical status of the practicing nurses includes role clarity. They need to imbibe the basic activities of a nurse and should live up to them. Though they are prone to stresses such as cognitive stress, work-family conflicts, and other general depressions, they need to overcome them so that they can effectively serve the patients. Commitment to job and providing social support to the coworkers are some of the other elements which add up to the moral principles of the nurses, as discussed in the article. This part of the paper will identify the caritas processes and the universal needs that are implied in the research article. Generally, the nursing profession is considered to be noble profession since they serve the humanity, when they are in need. The practicing nurses can also be considered as life savers since they attend to the needs of the patients, and channelize the treatment in the proper way by assisting the physicians. Through this article, it is obvious that the transformational leadership styles have correlation with that of the social responsibility, extra effort, etc., which are some of the psychosocial work environment components. Thus, the needs of the patients are well attended by the nurses, where they render a helping hand for their complete recovery. The other caritas nature of the nurses includes emotional balance wherein, they accept the positive and the negative behaviors of the patients. They empathetically understand the emotional state of mind of the patients, and with utmost care and concern, they hide their own emotional demands and serve the patients efficiently. Above all, social support from their immediate superiors and coworkers assist them to perform their duties effectively. This part of the paper will describe the population sample taken in this research study. The sample taken was five groups of nurses and they were given with the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5x, which was used to identify the leadership style. The psychosocial work environment dimensions were measured using the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire. Thus, the sample was taken form the service industry and they have included Pearson’s R correlation to statistically analyze the relationship between the leadership styles and the psychosocial environment. Over all results had shown a significant correlation between the transformational leadership style or components and the healthy working environment. The results of the research study can also be applied to the other patient population, since the leadership styles and the psychosocial working environment are universal and are applicable in other industries too. Most of the general nursing communities are well aware of these findings, because in this modern world most of the hospitals are mainly patient-oriented and they strive hard to provide best service to the patients. To accomplish quality in their service, implementation of leadership styles such as transformational and transactional becomes more essential in order to create an effective psychosocial environment. Moreover, the nurses have to be well trained to have an effective control over their emotions and exhibit amicable behavior. Thus, some of the psychosocial environment components such as general health, commitment, job satisfaction, rewards, appreciation, social responsibility, etc., are built up with the effective leadership styles. On the other hand, like any other industries, in the healthcare sector nurses are always prone to different form of stresses and the resultant depressions, as they deal with the patient’s emotions apart from the health conditions. On such occasions, as stated in the research study, effective implementation of the leadership styles can allow in the building up of the healthy working environment where the practicing nurses will be able to perform their duties efficiently and serve the patients. In reality though some of the hospital follow the traditional methods of serving the patients, most of them have switched on the Total Quality Management through which they meet needs of the patients and provide an effective psychosocial environment to the nurses. References Malloy, T & Penprase, B. (2012). Nursing leadership style and psychosocial work environment, Journal of Nursing Management, 18: 715-725. “An In-Depth Look into the Nursing Process” (n. d). Nursing process. Retrieved from: http://www.nursingprocess.org/ Read More