Clinical Leadership in Nursing

Running head: CLINICAL LEADERSHIP IN NURSING
CLINICAL LEADERSHIP IN NURSING
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1CLINICAL LEADERSHIP IN NURSING
Introduction
The following paper will focus upon exploring and reviewing the concepts of clinical
leadership in nursing, explored by four scholarly, peer-reviewed articles by evaluating the
applied clinical leadership theories, identified clinical issues, relevance of findings to existing
nursing leader scenario along with recommendations for future clinical leadership practice. This
paper will thus, choose to evaluate the concepts of aesthetic leadership by Mannix, Wilkes and
Daly (2015), person-centered leadership by Cardiff, McComack and McCance (2018),
comparison of transformational and participative leadership by Xu (2017) and transformational
leadership by Boahmah and Clarke (2017).
Leadership Theory
The leadership theory explored by authors Mannix, Wilkes and Daly (2015), includes the
concepts of aesthetic leadership, which is characterized by leaders presenting themselves and
undertaking clinical leadership decisions based on the perceptions prevalent among followers
considering how they view their leader. Nurses who seek to specialized in concepts of aesthetic
leadership should enlighten themselves on concepts of servant leadership and emphasize
extensively on ethical and moral values and maintenance of cordial nurse-staff relationships.
Aesthetic nursing leaders are required to experts in relational leadership and formulation of
meaning from experience gathered during interaction with followers using aligned concepts of
sensory, emotional, somatic and tacit awareness (Dangmei & Singh, 2017). Cardiff, McComack
and McCance (2018), alternatively focus on the theoretical concepts of patient centered
leadership in clinical nursing. Person centered nursing clinical leadership is characterized by
nursing leaders delegating, allocating and leading the clinical workforce with the collective aim

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to establish and maintain healthy relationships with patients as well as staff based on humanistic
ethical values like respect, understanding and individual self-determination (Jacobsen et al.,
2017). Author Xu (2017) likewise explored the effects of collective administration of theories of
transformational and participative leadership in the clinical nursing leadership process in
particular and healthcare staff management in general. Transformational nursing leadership is
characterized by nurses imbibing motivational skills upon the clinical workforce based upon
their existing competencies and inspiring them to achieve greater clinical functional outcomes
(Fischer, 2016). Participative leadership on the other hand is a form of democratic nursing
leadership where nurse leaders will provide staff to directly engage or participate in the clinical
decision-making process (Asamani, Naab & Ofei, 2016). Authors Boamah and Clarke (2018),
further expounded the theory of transformational nursing leadership by exploring related
theoretical concepts of idealized influenced, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and
individualized consideration in the achievement of occupational satisfaction, clinical quality and
patient safety among healthcare staff.
Issues/Problems
The clinical issues and problems explored by Mannix, Wilkes and Daly (2015), focused
extensively on the disadvantages associated with transformational and congruent leadership –
nursing leadership theories which have widespread usage in clinical organizational usage. It has
been postulated that transformational leadership fails to allows nurse leaders to administer their
clinical leadership integrity, provides negligible scope to consider the cultural values of staff and
fails to respect the importance of emotional and ethical aspects of nurse-staff relationship
(Giddens, 2018). Congruent leadership, due to its need for alignment between leader actions and
leader principles, has been criticized to restrict leadership creativity and organizational change

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behaviors. Hence, considering the same, aesthetic leadership has been proven to be an
advantageous alternative which prioritizes emotional aspects of clinical workforce delegation
(Stanley & Carvalho, 2016). Cardiff, McComack and McCance (2018), discuss extensively on
the issues of hierarchical nursing leadership which does to explore the importance of
relationships between staff and nurse leaders, which is why, person centered leadership theories
have been implicated to be beneficial and respectful of staff’s needs. Xu (2017) explored the
issues of healthcare organizational challenges such as clinical emergencies, diverse demands and
expectations from patients, medical expenditure issues and occupational goals to fulfill
organizational objectives and quality standards for which, administration of appropriate clinical
governance procedures is of utmost importance. Likewise, Boamah and Clarke (2018), in their
exploration of transformational leadership, identified the major issues of patient safety in the
clinical scenario. Lack of adequate nursing leadership and standards of clinical governance result
in the emergence of adverse healthcare errors and events which are otherwise preventable, and
hence, lead to medical errors, negative health outcomes, fatal incidents like patient death and
injuries and loss of consumer satisfaction (Merrill, 2015).
Relevance
For the achievement of positive health outcomes in the patient along with the
organizational fulfillment of quality standards, there is a need for healthcare organizations to
ensure usage of relevant theories of nursing clinical leadership by nurses (Moorley & Chinn,.
2016). Upon extensive reviewing of all the four identified articles examining nursing leadership
theories in the clinical context, findings obtained were found to be of relevance in terms of
guidelines for future usage by potential nursing leaders. Aesthetic leadership, as explored by
Mannix, Wilkes and Daly (2015), is of particular relevance to the development of leadership