Magnetic Forces: Quality of Nursing Leadership, Management Style, and Organizational Structure - Essay Example

"Magnetic Forces: Quality of Nursing Leadership, Management Style, and Organizational Structure" is an engrossing example of a paper on care.
This paper will discuss three magnetic forces; quality of nursing leadership, management style, and organizational structure, as the most important characteristics in optimizing system effectiveness and individual performance in a hospital implementing clinical information systems. With regard to the quality of nursing leadership, nurse leaders in magnetic hospitals are strong, knowledgeable, and risk-takers who adhere to articulated philosophies in their daily operations (Schmidt & Brown, 2012). They are also able to convey a powerful sense of support and advocacy on the nursing staff’s behalf. Quality and strong nursing leadership will enhance the ability of hospitals to spearhead continuous initiatives for quality improvement, facilitation of models that empower the delivery of care, fostering of lifelong learning, and strategic management of resources. For instance, in a hospital seeking to support nursing excellence, nurse leaders can exploit IT in the identification of issues, outcome analysis, and accessing data in support of change programs. Data elicited from the system of decision support, including patient satisfaction, patient accounting, and staffing information can be used in recognition of success, identification of areas requiring improvement, and planning for strategic level nursing programs (Schmidt & Brown, 2012).

Management style is also crucial in optimizing system effectiveness and individual performances, especially where nursing and hospital administrators utilize participative styles of management that incorporate staff feedback from all organizational levels (Schmidt & Brown, 2012). Feedback, therefore, should be encouraged, while nurse leaders should be accessible, visible, and committed to effective communication with the nursing staff. In a hospital implementing clinical information systems to optimize system effectiveness and individual performances, for example, effective management of change is crucial, particularly in incorporating nurse input at all organizational levels. In this case, the participative management style will allow a direct conduit from the nurses and clinicians to the IS members of staff in charge of implementing the system. In addition, it will also allow the IS staff members to directly work with clinicians and nurses on how the system will be used. The success of the management team’s style is critical to the nursing staff’s acceptance of the change (Schmidt & Brown, 2012), which, in turn, is crucial in ensuring the system optimizes optimize system effectiveness and individual performances.

Finally, organizational structure for magnetic hospitals is normally flat, instead of vertical, while decision-making is based on units or departments (Schmidt & Brown, 2012). This ensures that there is a strong representation of nursing staff in the structure of organizational committees. The collaborative and flat organizational structure that is common in magnetic hospitals can be considered as consistent with necessary collaboration in organizations to select clinical informational systems, as well as designing it and implementing it. In adopting the clinical information system, the hospital organization with a flat and collaborative structure can create an inter-departmental team to re-design and define the workflow. In addition, they could also develop programs for training that would allow nurses to learn about how to use the system thus optimizing the nursing staff’s individual effectiveness and the overall system’s effectiveness. Moreover, by enabling the staff to access information in real time across all levels of the organization, the staff is empowered. The organizational structure also allows the staff to access procedural delays and throughput analysis from any terminal and at any time, enabling them to make decisions at the departmental level (Schmidt & Brown, 2012). Nurses who are in-charge at the departmental level can also monitor the delivery of daily care and intervene proactively when this is warranted by available data.