Importance of Nursing Leadership and Teamwork in Healthcare

Running head: ARTICLE ANALYSIS
ARTICLE ANALYSIS
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ARTICLE ANALYSIS
Nursing leadership can be defined as the capability of an expert nursing professional to
improve the quality of care provided by the nursing professional and to direct their participation
in the clinical care (Heckenman et al., 2015). It also guides effective exhibition of teamwork by
all members attending a patient. Teamwork is another important aspect of effective healthcare
system. Studies are of the opinion that healthcare is a complex entity that mainly require the
coordination of multiple talented individuals for providing high quality care (Neubert et al.,
2017). Therefore, nurses need to work very closely with that of the physicians and even the
specialists in providing well-organized comprehensive care. Hence, teamwork is found to be
extremely crucial for better patient care and to increase patient satisfaction (Souza et al., 2016).
This assignment would mainly shed more light on the different concepts of leadership and
teamwork thereby helping to develop an in-depth knowledge on the topics.
Baik and Zierlar (2017) had stated that effective inter-professional teamwork as well as
communication is important factors that help in enhancing nursing outcomes. It has been found
that a highly competent and functional IP team can contribute to higher level of nurse job
satisfaction as well as nurse retention. Such teams undertake a collaborative work approach that
mainly contributes in fostering better team functioning between the multiple healthcare
professionals that included improvement in the care delivery as well as the quality of the patient
care that ensured patient satisfaction. The nurse participants, who participated in the study, had
been of the opinion that they were able to understand and follow the care plan of the patient more
efficiently because the members of the team was found to be “on the same page at the same
time”. It indeed increased the job satisfaction of the patients, which was mainly because of the
improved IP team performance along with that of the enhanced psychological safety and cultural
changes, better quality of the patient care and efficient workflow. Therefore, the paper found out

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ARTICLE ANALYSIS
that effective teamwork and communication between multiple healthcare professionals that
include nurses can be considered as the cornerstones for improving the care delivery as well as
the nursing outcomes and even the quality of patient care in the clinical settings.
Scully (2015) is of the opinion that the most recent theory of leadership in the healthcare
profession had evolved from both the personal trait theory as well as from the situational
theories. They are of the opinion that effective leadership mainly depends on the personality of
the leaders and on the situation at the hand as well as the qualities of the followers. Leadership
should never be considered as a skill that can be developed haphazardly but needs to involve
vision and then communicating the vision to that of the others. The leadership strength should be
considered as the reality that should serve as the role model or the symbol thereby helping others
to understand what sort of skills are to be expected from the subordinates. Leaders should act as
the source of energy that plays the part of motivating subordinates to work beyond their potential
to meet the organizational mission and vision. The authors are of the opinion that according to
the modern shaping of the healthcare system and the needs of the service seekers,
transformational leadership is beloved to bring out the best outcomes for the team of
subordinates. This form of leadership is believed to be the most suitable in the nursing leadership
if modern complexities and environment in which nurses function are taken into action. This is a
theory of connective as well as shared leadership that values the opinion and suggestions of the
nursing subordinates in developing care-planning process thereby making them feel respected in
their profession. This is also seen to develop the nursing morale enhancing their service care
delivery.
It is also important to understand the different factors that contribute to effective
teamwork in healthcare centers. One of the most important components of effective teamwork is