Management and Leadership in Nursing - Essay Example

"Management and Leadership in Nursing" is a brilliant example of a paper on care. I am a registered nurse working in the intensive care unit as a bedside nurse. My supervisor evaluated my performance. I had mixed feelings about his results on the evaluation. This essay is going to discuss the positive and negative feedback from the evaluation, how it reflected my performance and how I would change the process in which the performance appraisal was done if I were the evaluator.

Positive and negative feedback

            My past evaluation as a registered nurse revealed both positive and negative attributes of my character that enabled me to identify my strengths and weaknesses. The positive feedback from my performance appraisal was that I demonstrated the ability to carry out nursing procedures effectively using the nursing process. In addition, I ensured that there was a clean and safe environment for the patients in the intensive care unit. I was highly rated among the nurses that provide holistic and age-appropriate patient care showing my skill of assessing patients, problems, and situation needs. The supervisor was confident about my ability to assist the medical providers with treatments, procedures, and rounds hence ensuring timely completion of the orders of the medical providers. There was positive feedback about my response towards emergency situations and customer service relationships with the patients and members of staff.

            The supervisor had negative feedback about leadership skills since he felt that I was controlled by others and not strong enough to defend myself during confrontations. The supervisor felt that I lacked self-motivation and the ability to make significant decisions and that I needed to learn how to control my emotions, especially when dealing with patients in the intensive care unit.

Reflections

            The supervisor’s positive evaluations accurately reflected my performance as I understand my duties and responsibilities as a bedside nurse in the intensive care unit. I understand the problems that patients face and hence empathize with their situations. This explains why my supervisor thought that I am too emotional and needed to control situations. The evaluator was wrong in questioning my leadership skills based on the fact that I do not argue with patients and other nurses. I choose to listen to the patients and my colleagues to make them feel better and respected and not because I am weak (Nagelkerk and Huber, 2006).  I believe that I am self-motivated because I take initiatives to help the patients when there is a need and ensure that their stay at the hospital is comfortable.

As the evaluator

            I would change the way the performance appraisal was conducted if I were the evaluator. I would change this by ensuring that I interact with the individuals I am to assess at different levels to ensure that I record the right information. I would find friends of the person that I am evaluating, and ask them few basic questions regarding the character of the individual since they could have significant information that helps in the evaluation process (Rigolosi, 2013). In order to get the right information, I would speak to the patients and their relatives to find out if they were satisfied with the nurse’s services and investigate how the individual records and documents his or her work.

Conclusion

            Performance appraisals are significant because they enable the nurses to evaluate their work and to determine the key areas in which they can improve. The positive and negative feedback encourages the employees to better their performance. Good communication and leadership skills, customer relations, innovation, and problem-solving ability are useful appraisal tools for nurses.

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