Leadership in Nursing: Dealing with a Critical Incident of Self-Harm

LEADERSHIP

Table of Contents
REFLECTIVE ESSAY....................................................................................................................3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Introduction
Leadership is referred as the ability of a leader to have a significant influence on their
team members with the help of their guidance and support. This is essential for increasing the
overall effectiveness of the staff members to reach the organizational goals successfully
(Nieuwboer and et.al., 2019). The current reflective essay will explain the details of a clinical
incident which occurred in my nursing career. This incident explains the situation of self-harm
which was caused by a patient due to his mental instability. He was admitted in the hospital for a
surgery following a fracture in his knee which happened due to an accident. Post-surgery, while
the patient was recovering in the hospital, he started depicting a tendency of self-harm as he was
suffering from mental health issues as well. This led to the creation of a critical situation
whereby the patient was to be treated as well as protected from self-harm. There was also a need
to protect the nursing staff as he may have harmed them as well. The learnings from this
experience are briefly discussed in the essay, evaluation of different approaches which worked
for the patient will be analysed. The nursing leadership which worked with the inter-professional
teams and the supervision activities are also discussed.
Main Body
In this incident, I was working as a nurse at the hospital having a team of staff members
which had a role to provide services to the patients for their rapid recovery. This incident
describes the situation of a patient who have been admitted due to a knee injury. It was found
that he had a fracture and need to be at rest for a matter of 2 weeks in the hospital. The situation
was critical as the self-harming behaviour was negatively impacting the recovery of the patient
as well as the work of the other nursing staff.
I have dealt this situation with the help of Contingency Leadership Theory which is a
suitable theory that majorly focusses on the situational aspects of the failure or success of a
leader. Proper emphasis is given on the need of the situation which is suitable in order to make
appropriate decisions. With the help of this leadership theory appropriate changes can be made
which are useful to manage the effectiveness of the process (Stanley and Stanley, 2018). This
theory was crucial for me to understand the critical aspects of the condition of the patient
appropriately. I have been able to increase my effectiveness to deal with the critical situation at