Leadership in Clinical Practice

This essay discusses the importance of effective leadership in clinical practice to provide efficient service and ensure high quality health care service. It focuses on the issue of sleeping of nursing staffs during night shift, why change is required in health care centre regarding this and barriers to change. The essay also highlights the role of effective leadership in addressing the issue in an effective manner.

Running head: LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
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1LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
Patient safety and patient care is the main focus of every health care professionals and
health care centre and in order to provide efficient service an effective leadership is required in
the health care centre (Wong, Cummings & Ducharme, 2013). In the current clinical situation,
effective leadership in clinical practice ensures the high quality health care service and provides
safe and adequate care with consistency. It is important for the nursing professionals to recognize
the theories related to leadership in the clinical practice. It would help to enable the nursing
professionals to improve their skills and become an efficient leader, which helps them to
improve their relationship with their colleagues. Effective leadership helps to resolve many
issues related to the service provided by the nursing professionals and the health care centre
(Scully, 2015). In the current scenario, sleeping of the nursing staffs during night shift is one of
the main issues in the health care centre that create problems to the patients and reduces the
quality of the service provided by the health care centre (Johnson et al., 2014). The essay will
focus on the seriousness of the issue, why change is required in health care centre regarding this
and barriers to change. The following paper will give us proper idea about the role of effective
leadership in addressing the issue in an effective manner.
In the modern society, night shift is a common feature of most of the workplace and
nursing field is one of the most important workplaces where night shift is important in order to
provide 24 hours service to the people with need. It is important for the nursing professionals
who are working in the night shift to remain alert about the needs of the people during their shift
(Douglas, 2014). Nursing is the field of emergency. There is no specific time for being sick.
Thus, the nursing professional need to be prepared in order to attend any emergency case during
their shift. It is important for a nursing professional to provide effective care to the patient at the
time of their need in order to satisfy the patient with their service. In the night shift it is more

2LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
important to remain awake during the shift, monitor the condition of the patients, recognize their
problems and provide effective care service if needed. Thus, sleeping in the workplace such as
health care centre during night shift could create serious issue for the patients, as they would
have to suffer for it (Edwards, McMilan & Fallis, 2013). In the current scenario, sleeping of the
nursing staffs during night shift is one of the main causes that are creating critical problems to
the patients and the management as well. Such activity in the health care centre leads to the
ignorance of the patient safety. The nursing staffs fail to provide quality care to the patients due
such irresponsible activity. People prefer admitting the patient in the hospital as they promise to
provide 24 hours effective care in order to improve the health condition of the patient. Thus,
sleeping during night shift and ignoring the responsibility of the patient result in the reduction of
the patient satisfaction, hence, provides negative outcomes. The health care centre contains some
night policy, where it is mentioned clearly that no nursing staff is allowed to take nap during the
night shift. Thus, if the nursing staffs sleep during the night shift, it means they are violating the
night shift policy of the health care centre, which is not acceptable by the management. It results
in reducing the reputation of the health care centre. Thus, the issue need to be addressed in an
effective manner in order to provide efficient care service to the patients and meet their
requirements to achieve positive outcomes. Hence, effective leadership is required in the clinical
practice in order to prevent the nursing professionals from sleeping in their workplace during
night shift, make them understand the importance of their job, convince them to take their job
more seriously and inspire them to sustain positive attitude regarding their responsibility. An
effective leadership could help to bring changes in the management of the health care centre in
order to achieve positive outcomes (Gopee & Galloway, 2017).

3LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
However, beside such recognition of the issue related to the sleeping of the nursing
professionals during night shift and importance of effective leadership in bringing change in the
system in order to counter the issue, the barriers for the leaders in the way of change is
considerable. One of the most important challenges for the leader is to make the nursing staffs
acknowledged for their irresponsible activity and recognized the seriousness of their job,
because, it is the responsibility of the individual to maintain positive attitude towards their work.
Adequate resources for the development and appropriate construction are the base of bringing
change in the system (Spurgeon, Clark & Ham, 2017). Hence, poor construction and lack in the
resources for the development programme could create obstacle in the way of change. In order to
provide effective leadership and achieve expected out comes, efficient team performance is
important. Thus, poor teamwork could create challenges for the leader to bring effective changes
in the health care system. In addition, lack of commitment and vision and poor interdisciplinary
relationships need to be considered as some important barriers as they could lead to poor
leadership provided by the leader and the role of such leader might be unacceptable in the
clinical practice. Incentives could play an important role in motivating the nursing professionals,
thus, poor incentive structure is a barrier to the changes in the health care system (Grossman &
Valiga, 2016). Other barriers include the clinician cynicism, lack of confidence in the leader and
poor communication skill, as the leader need to be confident in approaching to the nursing staffs
and communication skill is important to build effective relationship with the colleagues (Arnold
& Boggs, 2015). Thus, to implement effective leadership in the clinical practice and address the
issue of sleeping of the nursing professionals during night shift, the leaders should first recognize
such barriers in the health care centre in order to make effective strategies to resolve the issue
and manage the system in an effective manner.

4LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
Leadership is an important function of the management. The leadership process inspires
the team member to understand the needs of the workplace and provides proper strategies to
meet the requirements by facilitating individual in order to collect effort to accomplish the
objective. Leadership is the main source of management that increase the efficiency of the team
in order to achieve goal (Porter-O'Grady, 2015). Thus, proper leadership could help the health
care organization to overcome the issue of sleeping in the nightshift. In order to address the
issue, the leaders would establish a trustworthy relationship with the followers so that the
opinion of the leaders could be acceptable by the followers. The leaders would design a
particular schedule regarding the shift of individual and ensure that every nursing professional
are comfortable with their shift timing (Yoder-Wise, 2014). The leaders would make understand
the importance of the job role to individual in a process of storytelling rather than in the way of
criticise the nursing professional. It could help the leader to gain the trust of the staffs, so they
could easily accept the approach of the leaders (Butts & Rich, 2013). The leaders would
communicate with the nurses in an effective manner to understand the needs and concerns of the
nurses regarding their shifts. It could help the leaders to provide comfortable shifts to the
individual. Through the effective communication, the leaders would express their expectations
for the nursing staffs that could motivate the nursing professionals to improve their skill in order
to develop their career. Such communication could help the nurses to understand the value of
their contribution (Huber, 2017). Thus, the nurses could increase their effort regarding their
commitment towards the health organization in order to achieve their organizational goals. In
order to contribute in addressing the problem of sleeping in the night shift, the leaders would
recognize the central reason regarding the occurrence of such mistakes by the nurses (Ginter,
2018). Arranging a meeting with the staffs is important for this case in order to make understand

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the staffs about the seriousness of such irresponsible activity and its effect on the health of the
patients and the reputation of the health care organization. During the meeting, the leader would
listen to all the staffs without getting defensive and understand the prospective of individual in
order to provide effective resolution for the issue. After understanding the seriousness of the
issue and analysing effective suggestion to resolve it, the leaders would provide effective policies
in order to prevent such irresponsible activities from occurring in future in the field of clinical
practice (Barr & Dowding, 2015). Thus, the contribution of leadership could play an important
role in addressing the current issue, as it is the duty of the leaders to motivate the staffs to
improve their skills and efficiency in order to provide effective service and achieve desired
outcomes.
In order to contribute effectively in the workplace the leaders must contain some skills.
One of the most important skills of the leaders should be their communication skill. The leaders
must communicate in a way that could motivate the team to improve their efficiency of taking
responsibility (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). The leaders should use the skill of guidance not the
commands in order to motivate the team. Team building power is another important skill that the
leaders should posses. The leaders must have the efficiency to build a proper team that performs
well in order to achieve positive outcomes. The leaders must have the skill of setting goal. The
leaders need to set goal for the staffs so that they could effort to achieve it. Such vision motivates
the staffs to take positive steps towards achieving the goal. Beside this, the leaders should be
responsive to the needs of the staffs and should have the skill to understand any situation or issue
in order to provide effective resolution for it (Porter-O'Grady, 2015).
Such contribution of the leaders would be beneficial for the health care organizations in
order to resolve the issue of sleeping of nursing staffs in the night shift. The strategy of preparing

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schedule for the shifts with the concern of the staffs could help to make the nursing staff
comfortable with their shift. The idea of arranging meeting in order to discuss the seriousness of
the issue, understand the prospective of the nurses and providing effective solution could help to
resolve the issue in an effective manner (Thomas, 2015). The night shift policy could help the
organization to prevent the nurses from doing such mistakes in future. The effective
communication skill of the leaders could help the nursing staffs in understanding the value of
their contribution (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). The idea of allowing the nursing staffs to present
their prospective regarding the shift could help to gain the trust of the nursing staffs and it could
help to motivate them to do their job more efficiently in order to achieve expected outcomes
(Porter-O'Grady, 2015). Such effort of the leaders in order to counter the issue could help to
provide 24 hours service to the people with need and could meet the satisfaction level of the
patients.
From the above analysis, it can be concluded that, sleeping of nursing staffs during night
shift is one of the most important issues that the patients are facing in the health care
organizations and effective leadership is required in the clinical practice in order to counter the
issue in an effective manner. Effective leadership is the process that helps to improve the
capability of individual. The leaders could introduce effective interventions to resolve such issue.
Their communication skill, discussion making skill, way of approaching to the nurses, effort to
understand the problem and providing effective policies as resolution would be beneficial for the
health care organizations. Such contribution of the leaders would inspire the nursing staffs to
prevent themselves from doing such mistakes in the future and inspire them to provide sufficient
service in order to meet the requirement of the patients and achieve positive outcomes.

7LEADERSHIP IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
Reference:
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Edwards, M., McMilan, D., & Fallis, W. (2013). Napping during breaks on night shift: critical
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