Clinical Leadership and Management in Nursing

Running head: HEALTHCARE
Clinical Leadership and Management in Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Clinical leadership is an umbrella term that comprises of the notion of medical
healthcare staff who are entitled with the responsibility of leadership implementation that
requires them to participate in inspiring, setting, and promoting vision and values (Swanwick
& McKimm, 2017). Furthermore, the clinical experience and expertise of the leaders also
helps them ensuring that the needs and requirements of all patients form the major focus of
care delivery. There is mounting evidence for the fact that clinical leadership covers a
plethora of roles that exist across multidisciplinary team members and primary care nurses,
and forms the forefront of policy execution and healthcare innovation (Stegen, Leveson,
Llewelyn & De Giorgi, 2018). Furthermore, clinical leaders are also entitled with the
responsibility of developing and formulating quality improvement strategies, encouraging
subordinates, bringing about change management, and facilitating team communication. This
assignment will critically evaluate four research articles that are based on clinical leadership,
and will further outline their limitations.
Article 1
This article accurately identifies the fact that under most circumstances, the health
care workers are stressed by a plethora of governmentally determined, top-down change
administration enterprises, which are generally disseminated to grass-roots physicians and
nursing professionals (McKeown & Carey, 2015). Hence, the healthcare workers are not
provided with adequate opportunity for influencing the origin or implementation of the
change management policies. This is in accordance to the fact that the comparative absence
of democracy and contribution/involvement in major decision making processes in workplace
has been identified as a major reason behind weakened staff morale (Timming & Summers,
2018). Therefore, the article highlighted a stereotypically ignored facet of discourse, in
relation to clinical leadership, namely, the prominence of power relations.

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The researchers elaborated on the fact that although transformational leadership has
proved effective in enhancing the quality of care and addressing cost-effectiveness of
healthcare, it is not effective in meeting the challenging professional difficulties, resource
limitations and decision making capacity, thus severely limiting the potential of actualisation
of change management processes. The findings of the research article elaborated on the need
for implementing democratic leadership in healthcare organisations based on the fact that this
form of leadership will observe the service users and health care teams in the form of a
community. Furthermore, the authors also suggested that democratic leadership has the
potential of making the leaders work in collaboration, with the aim of implementing novel
ways that would help them relate to each other (McKeown & Carey, 2015). The findings
further suggested that numerous government policies have been formulated and enforced in
recent years that have accelerated the interest amid service users, and have also enhanced
involvement of the carers in the procedure of development and delivery of public health
services. In addition, nursing professionals have also been identified to play a crucial role in
such endeavours.
It was stated that demonstration of democratic clinical leadership expertise and
characteristics must typically comprise of the characteristics of patience, listening, and
humility. Furthermore, such democratic leaders are also expected to demonstrate flexibility
and resilience while being involved in decision making and change management processes
(McKeown & Carey, 2015). Relevance of the research findings can be accredited to the fact
that it will encourage all members of multidisciplinary care team to share their opinions and
ideas, even under circumstances when the clinical leader retains the concluding say.
Furthermore, application of democratic leadership will also ensure that fairness, creativity,
competence, and honesty is maintained the time of care delivery (Iqbal, Anwar & Haider,
2015). Thus, it is a good leadership style for clinical settings since abilities and skills of all

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the authorities would equally contribute to the accomplishment of the healthcare
organization. However, one major limitation of this leadership style can be accredited to the
fact that obtaining responses and feedback from all team members is a time consuming
procedure (McKeown, Carey, Rhodes & Jones, 2015). Furthermore, under most
circumstances, the confident team members continually come ahead and provide suggestions,
whereas hesitant workers might never get the chance to participate in decision making.
Article 2
The aim of the second article was to explore the perception and opinion of staff
nurses, in relation to the leadership styles that were embraced and implemented by their nurse
managers. The researchers aimed to identify the style of leadership that ensured work
gratification amid staff nurses, followed by recognition of the behaviours that required
change in a healthcare organisation (Morsiani, Bagnasco & Sasso, 2017). The researchers
were accurate in identifying the fact that presence of particular conducts among nurse
managers, which the staff nurses recognise as helpful and compassionate, might vary from
behaviours that are considered supportive by the nurse managers. This was in accordance
with the fact that there are a plethora of evidences that discuss the behaviour of nurse
managers to play an important role in influencing satisfaction levels among the staff nurse
(Van Dyk, Siedlecki & Fitzpatrick, 2016). However, the researchers also elaborated on the
fact that there is lack of evidence regarding the manner by which staff nurses identify the
styles of leadership in their managers, and the impacts that are created on the level of job
satisfaction of the nurses.
The researchers conducted a mixed method study that was based on administration of
a Multi‐factor Leadership Questionnaire to the study subjects, and also involved the
conduction of three focus groups. The findings of the study suggested that under most
circumstances, ward nurse managers were found to show adherence to a transactional