Transformational Leadership and Staff Retention - Admission/Application Essay Example

Transformational leadership and staff retention: an evidence review with implications for healthcare systems. INTRODUCTION Assessing the contrast between transformational leadership and retention of nurses is the main purpose of this article. The author has outlined the importance of transformational leadership to motivate the nurses and to be able to increase the number of registered nurses, as according to this article, the aspects of transformational leadership are able to influence the nurses positively. This article has been able to quote a lot of other studies done by other researchers that shows that there is a significant amount of study done before analyzing the contrast of this relationship amongst the two variables in this article. However, this article is only a combination of previous researches with hardly any new findings and conclusions, making it vague and hazy. The point which the author is trying to communicate is very clear as he has highlighted the need for leadership in health care institutions, but he has not been able to support any of his statements with evidence. The transformational leadership is defined as one of the most important ways of providing a meaning to the staff in the health care institutions and to change them into a more motivated workforce, which is in theory very true but only secondary data is not sufficient for an in depth analysis of the two combined variables. The author has undoubtedly covered all the possible aspects of previous conducted researches without leaving any room for misinterpretation of the subject matter but for the findings of this article to be implemented in a health care institution, certain observation or experiments should have been performed to validate the findings. EVALUATION OF RESEARCH METHODS The author has done a survey to research on the effect of transformational leadership on the retention of nurses. Survey being the only method of this type of research is rather dissappointing as even observations and experiments would also have suited well to the nature of this research, infact would have been able to provide accuracy to the results and findings. This is the main critique of this article as the only method to derive the results is not sufficiently enough to prove the dependecy of staff (nurses) retention on tranformational leadership. This makes the reults very generalized as transformational leadership has its traits to prove beneficial for the retention of employees in general not being specific to the nurses only. Moreover, there was no sample size set, neither was the secondary data targetted towards recent researches, it is, for that reason, very difficult to even check the credibility of this article as the researches used can be very old and out dated for the purposes of application and/or assessment.. The PICO method described in this article is very confusing and does not contrast with the true essence of the topic and with the two variable, namely, transformational leadership and its impact on nurses, this method of article assessment is also not precise enough to be used. The relationship which the author has tried to prove is important in its true nature, as the usage of transformational leadership can prove advantageous and improve the number of registered nurses and their retention through motivating them, inspiring them and giving them ownership of their own work. This article has very important mixture of variables which have not been assessed and studied earlier by other researchers, however, there is still a lot of room for further research on this subject which can be done by another author to further elaborate this imporatnt relationship and to provide more accuracy in the findings of the research through the use of some primary data collected in the due course of using proper research methods. Working with Nurse Educators’ Collective Wisdom: Implications For Recruitment and Retention. INTRODUCTION There is an overall decline in the number of registered nurses, which is in return having a direct impact on the economy, health care systems and on the availability of number of nurse educators. The author has linked this problem statement with the rest of the article to the lack of researches that should have been conducted in order to assess the impact of the nurse education environments on the retention of faculty and their recruitment. The author has said that such studies will be able to identify the underlying causes of the overall decline in the registered nurses, especially in the form of nurse educators. An assessment of a possible need of the nurse educators which has not been identified till yet can be identified and used for better retention and recruitment of nurse educators. In order to examine this, the author has chosen to do a pilot study consisting of the three variables of the structural domain which include academic commitments, nursing department/school/program leadership and autonomy in practice. The standing of the research paper is good as there actually have been very few studies on the subject matter chosen and the assessment of these three structural variables are also related to the core of the study. EVALUATION OF RESEARCH METHODS The author has used empirical studies to base the concept of this research paper and to support the problem statement. There are also a number of articles cited for the purpose of literature review of previous researches. However, the type of sample used is not specific, as it covers a broad spectrum of registered nurses ranging from practitioners who have recently started working along with the ones having 35 years of experience. Nurses with an experience of only a few months will be able to draw conclusions based on a very short span of their tenure and the nurses with an experience of as much as 35 years will be able to highlight a very different aspect of the education environment of nurses. Therefore, the results depicted from this sample and analyzed will not be able to provide very authentic and reliable findings and implications. This research paper has made a full and proper use of tables, as they have been very visibly incorporated into this paper for the purposes of clarity and easier understanding for the reader. The tables have been a very useful guide in aiding with the understanding of the variables, their relationships (dependency/independency) and the findings. The findings of this research paper suggest that there is a direct relationship of the working environment on the retention of nurse educators. The structural relationship of the environment directly impacts the behavior and motivational level of nurses. There is a chart shown to develop this model clearly in the mind of the reader, which shows that there is a flow of energy between the environment and the nurse educators. This research paper has suggested that the nurse educators, themselves can help develop and change the working environment according to the elements that they perceive important for the environment of their workplace. The topic of this research paper was very important to be explored as there is little research done on the workplace environment impacts on nurse educators and in order to increase the declining rate of certified nurses, the reason behind the decline was very essential to be explored. The findings of this research paper, overall, are also helpful in terms of improving the working environment of nurses. The relationship between managerial leadership behaviors and staff nurse retention. Introduction The main purpose of this article was to provide a detailed description about the perceptions of managerial leadership behaviors in direct relationship with the turnover of nurse staff. Also, a comparison has been done between the behaviors of nurse manager leaderships according to the perception of the staff nurses and the managers. The author Carol Kleinman has tried to prove that the more effective the leadership style of the nurse managers is, the happier and satisfied the nurses will be with their jobs. This will also help in better retention as nurses tend to stick to the hospital when they are working under good nurse leadership. The author has also tried to compare both transformational and transactional style of leadership by nurse managers and says that they are both effective. But it is still unclear when nurse manager leadership behaviors help in retaining the nurse staff or not. To find out the effects, the author conducted a detailed, comprehensive study at a 465-bed community hospital in the northeastern United States. The people who were made a part of the study were all staff nurses as well as nurse managers that were employed in care nursing units as well as the ambulatory. All of them were made a part of the study in order to include responses from everyone who was on the nurse staff. There were a total of 79 staff nurses and 10 nurse managers as part of the study sample who were included in the research. They were made to fill demographic forms so that the author had basic details about all of them. A 46-item Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was used by the author. This questionnaire measured responses from the nurses and managers about 12 different dimensions of leadership style. The idea was to take in opinions about what they thought about the different dimensions of leadership and then perform a comparative analysis between opinions of the nurses as well as the nurse managers. The time frame was three months for the collection of day from July to September 2003. The only managerial leadership style as perceived by staff nurses and was associated with staff nurse turnover was active management by exception. According to the nurse managers, they perceived that staff nurses showed more transformational leadership behaviors. On the other hand, while talking about their perceptions about transactional leadership behaviors, according to the writer’s study, acted as a deterring factor for staff retention. The study also said that nurse managers and staff did not agree on the frequency of transactional leadership behaviors’. Evaluation of the research methods The writer has used relevant literature for the study. For anyone referring to the article, it is imperative that they understand clearly what transformational and transactional leadership are. The writer has used literature to define what both forms of leadership are. However, one thing that was perhaps missing in the literature review is the description of a regular nurse’s job and the manager’s job as well. It would have been helpful in the context of the article to understand the dynamics of the jobs and its description. They would have helped in correlating it with the manager and motivation, retention and satisfaction with the job. The writer used both empirical studies well as personal observations for the article. The empirical study approach was done to obtain data for qualitative analysis which mainly included behavioural opinions on leadership styles from nurses and managers. In personal observations, the writer physically conducted the survey observing everything himself. In order to evaluate the sample it is important see if there are any problems with the sample, in size, composition, or in the way the sample was selected in relation to the purpose of the study. For example, it is essential to check if the sample was too small to generalize from, Therefore, in accordance to this article, the sample size was too broad as the volunteers gathered at a health food store might have different attitudes about nutrition than the population at large The study was conducted at a hospital and the sample included staff nurses and nurse managers in the ambulatory as well as the acute care nursing units. Questionnaires were distributed to 315 staff nurses and 16 nurse managers. The number of usable returned questionnaires was only 70 staff nurses and 10 nurse managers, which mean that the response rate was restricted to just 25% for staff nurses. The response from nurse managers was comparatively better. The sample size was small and could be mistaken for generalizing opinion over the whole staff. Also, the author should have included staff from other hospitals as well because that would have given him a more comprehensive overview of the situation. Overall, the article seems very useful and could be used as a reference in the future. The relationship identified between leadership and staff retention and satisfaction can be used and applied by nurse managers to ensure that their staff remains loyal and happy in job. However, it could have been more comprehensive with insights from two or two different hospitals. The work was free of bias and there was not any sort of inclination towards an outcome shown by the writer. In fact, the projection in the article was very clear and precise. The writer remained connected to the main subject and tone of the article. The one negative about the way the article was presented was the lack of visuals and graphics. The article was too full of text and that can become a bit redundant to read. The writer could have used graphs and bar charts for the representations of the quantitative data he collected during his study. In future, the subject of this article can be further expanded to exploring the staff side story of what they need, want and expect from the hospital in order to keep them motivated and happy in job. This could also help managers plan their policies better and ensure that their employees stick to them for the long term. The Impact of ED Nurse Manager Leadership Style on Staff Nurse Turnover and Patient Satisfaction in Academic Health Center Hospitals. Introduction In this article, Glenn Raup has tried to shed light on the impact of nurse manager leaderships style on staff nurse turnover and patient satisfaction. The purpose behind assembling an article like this was the find out the connection between the leadership styles of nurse managers and its effect on nurse turnover. In simple terms, the writer has found the relationship between the leadership behavior of the nurse manager and the staff turnover. Staff turnover is the number of nurses that left and were replaced in a certain time period. The other aspect that the writer links the leadership style behavior of the nurse manager is that with the patient satisfaction. The reason why this connection has been made is because is the staff nurse is happy with the job and is satisfied, that will have a positive response on her. This would also mean that the productivity of the nurse will increase and she will be providing the best possible care to the patient, hence proving patient satisfaction. This study aims to determine the types of leaderships that were deployed by nurse managers in academic center hospitals and how that affect nurse turnover and patient satisfaction. The study reveals that with transformational leadership adopted there was lower staff turnover while with non-transformational leadership style, it was quite the opposite. However, the study also revealed that the type of leadership behavior adopted by the nurse manager did not have any direct impact on the satisfaction of the patient. The research of this article suggests that the nurses are not affected by the leadership skills of their managers and hence there is no link between the leadership styles and the satisfaction levels of the patient. In other worse, patient care is not affected at all. Evaluation of the research methods The literature review conducted in the paper by the author is not adequate. A topic that is as complicated as this one needs to be backed up with essential amount of past literature and references. Also, it is important for the reader to understand clearly the different types of leadership behaviors and what are their characteristics. Without the knowledge of these, readers would now be able to comprehend the findings of the article. Secondly, there is no detailed literature included about the nurse job descriptions and how each can be affected by the management in certain situations. This would have helped in getting further insights on the topic. Lastly, patient care is a very vast topic. There was no real mention of any literature pertaining to patient care and what things satisfy patients who are admitted at hospitals for treatments. An empirical study approach was adopted for the completion of this article. Questionnaires were used to gain insights and first hand information from the staff nurses and nurse managers for the purpose of the analysis of the study. Personal observation was also conducted by the writer to gain personal experience about what was happening at the hospital. The sample size was 30 staff nurses and 15 managers that were representing 15 different US academic health centers. The one positive about the sample is that it includes officials from different centers but the negative was that the sample size was too small and could not give a clear representation of the whole nurse community. The work done by the writer in this article is fairly useful. However, the use of this study by officials in the future is still questionable because of the small sample size. That is a big factor because the results that have been derived in this article are based on the opinions of a handful of nurses. Therefore, generalizing would not be the correct method. However, if the sample size was increased substantially, this would make the research and its findings more meaningful. In terms of biasness, the author has not shown any inclination. This paper is free of biases. However, one notable observation is that the writer could have made more effort during the data collection process in order to collect wider array of data. In terms of writing of the essay, the flow of information is clear and concise and easy to comprehend. One thing that was lacking in this article as well for the graphical representation of data which means reading and comprehension much easier. This topic is an extremely interesting one and one that has not been researched as much as it should have. The nursing industry is a vital one because of its direct relationship with health. It is imperative that hospitals and nurse managers have the right sort of leadership strategies in place because that will reflect upon the performance of the staff nurses. The better they perform, the better will be the patient care. This article can go a long way in helping them strategize well and coming up with the best possible leadership traits that could be adopted by the managers of the hospitals. References Weberg, Dan. "Transformational leadership and staff retention: an evidence review with implications for healthcare systems." Nursing Administration Quarterly 34.3 (2010): 246-258. Cash, Penelope A., Rose Marie Doyle, Linda von Tettenborn, Donna Daines, and Vee Faria. "Working with Nurse Educators’ Collective Wisdom: Implications For Recruitment and Retention." NURSING 29, no. 5 (2011): 258. Kleinman, Carol. "The relationship between managerial leadership behaviors and staff nurse retention." Hospital Topics 82.4 (2004): 2-9. Raup, Glenn H. "The impact of ED nurse manager leadership style on staff nurse turnover and patient satisfaction in academic health center hospitals."Journal of emergency nursing: JEN: official publication of the Emergency Department Nurses Association 34.5 (2008): 403. Read More