Leadership Styles for Nursing Professionals

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Introduction
Nursing leadership involves critical thinking, accomplishment and support or
advocacy. These approaches take place in all roles and spheres of nursing practice. It has its
existence across all realms of nursing related to clinical, educational, management, research,
and policy in every background as well as at several levels. Leadership can emerge in
recognized, prearranged positions or in informal roles which nursing professionals tend to
assume. In the view of Stanley (2016), Power, Politics and Leadership, healthcare undergoes
a continual state of change typically with numerous change initiatives of several scales taking
place at the same time. Some are more effective than others. However, all are planned in
order to seek solutions to resolve complex problems which the current healthcare system is
encountering. Registered nurses are profoundly involved in system transformation as they
care about the health conditions of people and focuses on providing responsible healthcare
services. However, most importantly, it is professionalism as well as social accountability of
nursing professionals which facilitate them to take a robust leadership standpoint on behalf of
Australians (Dyess et al., 2016). The following essay will discuss the importance of
transformational and democratic leadership styles in maximising patient care and motivating
subordinates through successful inclusion in the healthcare system. Additionally, it will
outline the roles and accountabilities of Registered Nurses (RN) and methods of leading
teams. Lastly, by focusing on NNSQHS Standards 1, 2 and 6 and RN Standards of Teaching
it will illustrate ways to ensure quality patient care.
Discussion
Leadership styles for nursing professionals
Nurse leaders requires to work as a leader who guides every single individual who
contributes to the well-being of the patients in a specific nursing setting (Stanley, 2016). The
poor performance of nursing professionals who coordinates and balances all the other nurses,

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patients as well as their families in addition to other healthcare experts tends to result in
inferior patient results. In fact, it puts confrontational effects on the confidence and efficiency
of the staff members which leads to poor enactment of the entire clinical setting (Marquis &
Huston, 2009).
At this juncture, democratic leadership in nursing is highly effectual. This is because
it allows nurses to gather high involvement and partake in decisions related to patient care
delivery as well as teamwork with other employees. This probably increases nurses' job
satisfaction and commitment to work. On the contrary, it has been noted that some nurse
managers do not stand out as leaders, but as team members (McKeown & Carey, 2015). This
implies that nursing professionals own responsibilities could be of secondary significance.
This type of leadership style primarily improves the involvement of subordinates in the
decision making procedures of an organization. Even though, the final assessment is of the
leader, but through democratic leadership style nurse leaders gather information, response as
well as ideas from all the staff associates in advance of confirming the whole thing (Huber,
2017). Thus, democratic leadership style in nursing is relatively effective as all the personnel
feel esteemed and owing to this, they endeavour to give their best.
Another leadership style which will enhance the role of a RN in teaching peers is
transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is deliberated as one of the
most effective leadership approach to accomplish this. As a result of transformational
leadership, nursing professionals working at all levels in the organization observe that their
opinions are taken into consideration, their participations and contributions are appreciated as
well as their practices are being reinforced. In the view of Lin et al. (2015), inspiration and
motivation are regarded as two main constituents of transformational leadership. As per
studies, transformational leaders are likely to offer great enthusiasm to their followers to help
them accomplish the objectives and purposes of the organization while stimulating them to

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attain their individual aims (Choi et al., 2016). Bring into line the individual requirements
with the organizational needs is an indispensable approach of inspiring motivation. It is
important to note that transformational leaders strive to substitute the essence of teamwork
and obligation. A transformational leader explains the vision; undertaking as well as strategic
goals of the organization in addition to produces a robust sense of determination amongst the
subordinate which will transform individual and group performance to recover the quality of care
provided (Weng et al., 2015).
RN’s roles and responsibilities and methods to lead a team to provide quality care
RNs must be comprehensively associated with physicians, nursing subordinates as
well as other healthcare professionals in successfully restructuring healthcare system (Ritchie
et al., 2018). Furthermore, effective workforce planning as well as policymaking necessitate
improved data collection as well as information infrastructure (Stevenson et al., 2015). These
two roles stand out in light of RNs’ role in endorsing and promoting quality patient care
services and safety initiatives.
Methods of establishing organizational culture is seen as one of the most important
ways in which RNs can lead a proactive team in providing quality care. At this juncture,
transformational leadership has been found to be positively related with effective nursing unit
organization culture (Potter et al., 2016). Through the method of establishing strong
organizational culture, RNs will be able to build interpersonal relationship and trust.
Smolowitz et al. (2015) have found that higher or more improved group culture tends to be
allied to higher safety climate in general, thus signifying that general organizational culture is
significant to organizations’ climate of wellbeing.
On the other hand, with onward and upward approach, the RNs can proficiently lead
proactive team to provide quality patient care. According to Oxelmark et al. (2018), it is
important to use onward and upward approach in order to encourage subordinates to develop