Leadership in healthcare practice - Essay Example

Leadership reflective paper Introduction Leadership is a crucial aspect of healthcare practice that has a direct implication into planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating and budgeting for both the human resources and other working aids within a health care delivery facility. It is important to acquire leadership skills in a nursing training course, as it forms a basis for enabling cooperation and collaboration with other health care personnel to improve health care quality. Analysis of leadership presented in this paper encompasses on a personal reflection on my leadership abilities based on the five elements of leadership ie, vision, communication skills, change, stewardship, and developing and renewing followers. Reflection on the elements of leadership Owing to my socio-economic background, I was brought up in an environment where determination for goal achievement was given priority. As children, competition was encouraged in my social upbringing as a way of motivating children to have a vision for success. In this regard, I have had strengths on the part of my vision for success through possession of big dreams and goals. Just as it was encouraged in my childhood, I still strive every day to attain my dreams with hard work and determination. Additionally, optimism has been the biggest driving factor for setting my big dreams and goals. Within my goals, I usually set variety of objectives including career plans and paths, financial stability vision, and financial achievements as well as visions relating to lifestyle achievements. Nevertheless, despite being optimistic while setting my dreams and goals, I find myself with a core weakness of often setting complicated and highly demanding visions that are frequently unachievable. Financial and social obstacles are the most significant adversaries that limit my achievement of set goals and objectives. However, I have resorted to an improvement plan that will in cooperate setting of short-term goals that are more realistic and achievable on the basis of meeting my vision. I believe I possess the best communication skills in relation to my peers. Growing up as a child, I came to learn of the importance of listening as a tool for the development of communication. I thus have a strength with my listening skills that enables me to acquire concrete information and ideas that can be effectively presented to others. However, being timid is my most weakness in relation to communication skills. In as much as I can maintain a concrete communication and presentation to a tiny audience, I find it cumbersome to speak to a large audience or a meeting and a forum, thus making me not to be as articulate as when talking to a small group. My improvement plan for developing perfect communication skills would be to rely on constant practice with systematic increment in the number of the audience as a way of familiarizing with communication to larger crowds. Quick adaptation to change is my greatest strength when it comes to change process. I normally consider myself an early adopter that is helpful in preventing frustrations that my result from the change process. As much as I adopt change first enough, I would still review the rationale of the change to ensure the relevance and the rationale for the change as a means of avoidance of negative change. Nevertheless, my major weakness in change as a leadership element is encouragement and teaching of others to change and how to adapt to change. My weakness could be as a result of an imagination that everyone should be able to identify the need for change and conform appropriately which is not the real adaptation mechanism of people to change. An improvement plan that I purpose to undertake in relation to change is to learn methods of motivating others to accept change and adopt the change process positively. Stewardship is the leadership element category that I can say I am best. My childhood development in the society that encourages efficient and effective management of resources could be the core pillar for the development of my steward abilities. In most circumstances, when I see the need for responsibility and stewardship, I do not hesitate to fill the gap, and I am delighted and humbled in offering service and help to others. I plan to increase my steward capabilities by learning more on effective and efficient management of resources as well as scientific skills that can be used to care for others especially in health care set up. Throughout my educational program, I have found it interesting to participate in group work and assignments as it gives an opportunity to collaborate with others thus offering a basis where I can learn from other as well as develop others. I love to see others develop themselves as a result of my initiative thus giving me more strength to develop other people. Nevertheless, in as much as I would love to see others develop through me, actual implementation of the process has been a challenge since I do not know the exact modalities that can be applied to develop others effectively. Its on this basis that I have an improvement plan of learning ways through wich I can develop others. Inculcating the leadership skills into my career, I would like to finish my bachelor degree in nursing then work in a hospital setup. My most preferred hospital would be Winnie Palmer especially in the mother and infant unit since the hospital has a good reputation in regard to health care delivery. My second career goal is to pursue an advanced practice nursing in family nurse practitioner and work in a managing director office as a nurse practitioner. This will give me an opportunity to exercise my skills and abilities. Ultimately, my third career goal would be to open my clinic and practice as a family nurse practitioner. This would give me a sense of independence while at the same time give an opportunity to remit services back to the community. Conclusion Development and improvement of my leadership skills are a priority in career development as they will be crucial in determining my relationship with others and the profession. Appropriate development of the leadership elements would be beneficial in helping me to identify the needs of others as well as device ways of helping others to achieve their potentials. With the improvement plans to my key leadership elements, I purpose to attain adequate proficiency that would be beneficial to my career development plan. Reference Grossman, S.C & Valiga, T.M. (2009). The new leadership challenge: Creating the Future of nursing. (4th edition). Pp. 7-13. Read More