Nursing Leadership and Management Styles - Essay Example

"Nursing Leadership and Management Styles" is a perfect example of a paper on care.
From a historical perspective, nursing leadership was believed to develop from personal traits like intelligence, appearance, and energy. However, the current viewing of nursing leadership is based on the concepts of charismatic, interactive, transactional, and transformational styles. Furthermore, there is an emphasis on the understanding that there are different ways to lead and manage nursing professionals (Koch et al, 2004).

In the article ‘Nursing your Nurse Managers’ by Thrall 2006, the author highlights the requirement for finding the right kind of nursing professionals and retaining them, with particular emphasis on nurse managers, due to the complex and challenging nurture of the work environment in healthcare institutions.

Nursing managers have to be knowledgeable on patient safety, clinical practices, cost-effectiveness, and material and human resource management. In addition, it is the nurse managers that act as the buffer between the nursing management and the nursing professionals, advocating for the nursing professionals on one hand, and translating organizational decisions into a language acceptable to the nursing professionals on the other hand. In the light of the important role that nursing managers play in the smooth functioning of nursing care in a health care institution, it is no longer a surprise that health care institutions pay a lot of interest in retaining their nursing managers (Thrall, 2006).

The initial step in making nursing managers comfortable in their work responsibilities is to ease them into these responsibilities. Thus, new nurse managers have to be initially put in well-functioning units instead of other units, so that they are not overwhelmed by the challenges of such units. Through appropriate mentoring, the new nurse managers will become adept at handling the more challenging role functions, after which they can be provided with the opportunity to face these challenges. Learning is a continuing process, and by encouraging nurse managers to refresh themselves through seminars and other such learning activities, nursing managers can be made to be more adept in their managerial roles (Thrall, 2006).

I have been fortunate to have worked under a nurse manager, who has demonstrated nursing leadership. The nurse manager initially made me work along with colleagues, who were adept at their nursing functions, allowing me to learn from them, before getting me to function independently. In addition, the nurse manager was available to guide me through any of the problems I faced in providing quality nursing care to my patients. Finally, I found that she would stand up to the medical professionals and the hospital management when the nursing professionals were treated unfairly.

`Nursing managers play an important role in ensuring the quality of nursing care. They have to look after nursing professionals on one side while ensuring the achievement of organizational objectives on the other side. They achieve this by demonstrating leadership skills in the work environment.