Leadership in Nursing: Theories, Characteristics, and Challenges

This presentation discusses the importance of good leadership in healthcare, particularly in nursing. It covers various leadership theories, with a focus on transformational leadership, and the characteristics of a transformational leader. The presentation also explores the application of the four components of transformational leadership in nursing, as well as the duties of a nurse leader. Additionally, it discusses the key leadership challenges for the future of nursing, including the impact of healthcare environments, multigenerational workforce, and technological advancements. Finally, the presentation examines the role of health informatics and digital health in supporting person-centered care.

LEADERSHIP IN NURSING

Introduction
Leadership is the act of motivating and guiding a certain group of people towards
achieving their set objectives. Good leadership is when one sets the direction, builds and
provides an inspiring vision and end up creating a new thing. A good leader is the pacesetter in
every team.

Good leadership is essential in every sector including the healthcare. Good leadership
in management translates to a highly motivated group of employees hence better production.
For this reason, many scholars and researchers have performed studies to investigate
leadership. They have tried to break down leadership into various types and theories.

What Are Leadership Theories?
These are theories that try to give characteristics of a leader. They seek to explain why
a person might be a good leader and how to become one. They also help to identify what
behaviors a person can adopt in certain situations so as to improve his/her leadership abilities.

Examples Of Leadership Theories.
• These theories include big transformational leadership, style theory, breakthrough theory,
servant leadership among others.
• Today, the health sector demands leaders that inspire the entire population with the vision of
what can be accomplished. One of the leadership theories that go hand in hand with this is
the transformational leadership.

What Is Transformational Leadership?
This is leadership that inspires others to be the best forms of themselves. It urges
others to achieve amazing results. Transformational leaders are quiet leaders. They let their
work speak for themselves. Nurses should strive to be transformational leaders. Nurses thrive
under very strong leadership. The management affects the attitude of the nursing staff.

Characteristics Of Transformational Leaders?
They are:
• inspirational.
• good at conflict resolutions.
• Empathetic.
• Willing to make a sacrifice for others for the greater good. This is ideal for a person-centered care
• Confident.
• Providers of a safe environment for others.
• Advocators for change in the system whenever there is need.
• Maximizers of their fellow worker’s capabilities.

What Is Person-centered Care?
This is a way of thinking and doing things that sees the people using health and social
services as equal partners in planning, developing and monitoring care to make sure it meets
their needs. Person-centered care givers are empathetic and selfless.(McComark et.al,2017)

Application Of The Four Components Of
Transformational Leadership In Nursing
• Inspirational motivation
A nurse leader should be an inspiration to other people. Their work should speak for
themselves. He/she should provide a vision and help other people achieve it. He/she should
aim at nurturing and motivate others to be better employees.

• Individualized consideration
A nurse leader should have empathy towards everyone. He/she should recognize other
people’s feelings, strengths, weaknesses and feelings. It is important to let other team members
and patients that they are also valuable in the facility center and that their contribution matters.
He/she should always provide a person centered service.

• Intellectual stimulation
A nurse leader should have the ability to encourage problem solving and critical
thinking among the nurse staff. This should be done by welcoming ideas and suggestions on
how to handle issues from the staff as often as possible. They should also be willing to teach
team members new things.

• Idealized influence
Nurse leaders are role models to others. He/she should not “preach water and drink
wine”. To be able to inspire others, one “should walk the talk”. A nurse leader follows the rules
and is supportive of the clinical procedures and policies. The leader is honest, dependable and
enthusiastic about nursing and patient care.

Duties Of A Nurse Leader
Provide good communication and leadership skills.
Nurse leader should aim at meeting their goals and objective. Furthermore, they should
provide a good link between the nursing staff and the healthcare facility administrators. They
should ensure the two have a good relationship.

Implement useful changes to ensure patient wellness and safety.
A patient’s well-being should always be at the top of a nurse leader’s priorities. Nurse leaders
should implement the patient safety regulatory guidelines provided by the state and federal
agencies. Any team member who fails to uphold these regulations should be dealt with.

Provide a safe and person-centered service.
This entails providing a more holistic care. It requires the creation of a healthy relationship
among professionals, service providers, and families. These relationships should be built on
mutual trust. This is important as it reduces anxiety among the nurses, promotes teamwork and
increases the patient satisfaction with the care provided.

Key Leadership Challenges For The Future Of
Nursing.
Today’s healthcare environment is very different from the one in the past. Man has
achieved so much in the past 100 years. Judging from today’s healthcare environment, there
are concerns for many leadership challenges in the nursing industries in the future to come.

Healthcare Environments
Socio-economic Environment
Due to the drastic change in the economy, there has been a recent increase in the costs
of medical care. Nurses are forced to provide quality services with the limited resources
available like time. This poses a great challenge to the nurse leaders as providing a person-
centered care is made even harder. There are worries that this will not change anytime soon.

Internal Environment
• Multigenerational workforce
Today, the nursing workforce consists of people of different age groups who are
characterized by different work habits, attitudes, mode of communications and even skills and
knowledge. For this reason, it poses a challenge to the nurse leaders to manage all age groups
and understand them all. This is expected to continue being a problem even in future.

Technological Environment
The technological environment has changed so fast. Many inventions and innovations
are being made. This is great since health sector is one of the most important sectors today.
The advancements in the technological sector include:

Health Technology
Health technology is defined by WHO as. “The application of organized knowledge
and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures and systems developed to
solve health problems and improve quality of lives.” Health technology has brought about
very many advancements in the medical industry.

The health technology space continues to grow and evolve at a very high rate with
every innovation being made. According to many studies, the health technology is one of the
fastest growing technology. This has led to digital health and other advancements that
consumers everywhere are so grateful for.

Challenges Of Health Technology
Like all other innovations, there are challenges that have been brought about by health
technology. Some argue that these challenges are worth the benefits but a high number of
people think human beings are doing more harm than good to themselves. These challenges
include:

• Privacy protection
The patient’s digital data cannot be said to be 100% secure. There is a rising concern
for fraudsters and criminals who use this information to take advantage of the patients and
healthcare provider. As a nursing leader, it is your duty to ensure confidentiality of your
patient’s data.

• Ethics
The ethical requirements in the health sector are unlike in any other industry. The ethical
standards are so high. Some innovations are coming up that do not take this into consideration and
as a nurse leader you should never embrace them. This has led to slower technological
advancement.

• Plans to go global
Different countries have different laws. For this reason, health technology can hardly
be accepted in all countries. For health technology to be truly global, it has to manage the
expectations of each country which is almost impossible or all countries should have similar
laws which is also unlikely.

Digital Health
Digital health has been defined as the convergence and genomic revolutions with
healthcare, health, living and society. It is hard to tell if this innovation has brought more good
than harm to the healthcare sector. Some healthcare providers say this is the way to go while
others think it is not good for the patients.

Positive Impacts
• Health empowerment
Digital health has empowered us to keep track of our own health. One can know if
he/she is doing okay health wise without visiting a nurse. It has enabled us to manage our
health too as we can easily do what is needed to remain healthy. We can live more productive
lives hence improve our society.

• Reduced costs
People hardly spend a lot of money seeking healthcare as before. It’s also easier and
faster to receive healthcare services as it is instantly done. This saves on time that would have
been wasted by going to a nurse’s physical location.

Digital health computer programs like AlphaGo are now able to achieve high levels of
mastery by teaching itself. However, this poses one of the biggest future challenges in the
nursing industry. There is fear of lack of true person-centered care and safety. Computers
cannot be empathetic, compassionate or visionary.

Health Informatics
This refers to collecting, storing and retrieving health data to be used in better
collaboration between a doctor and a patient hence better healthcare. Today, patients are
allowed to access their health data digitally. This has been said to increase a patient’s
empowerment through awareness and health literacy.

Patients now feel like they have a big role towards their healthcare which is very
important. Receiving their test results over secure email helps patients feel the confidentiality
of their results. Some insist alerts and emails help them keep track of their health status and
help in the safe keeping of these records.

Innovations in Health Informatics as a
support for Person-centered Care
Health informatics has advanced over the years. It has facilitated patient-centered care
as it can provide ways for patients to provide critical information to their healthcare providers.
They are also able to share this information with their loved ones. There information systems
like electronic medical records that allow for interaction between the patient and the healthcare
provider hence high quality care.

Advantages Of Digital Data
• Ability to remember and confirm care plans.
• Faster and more efficient access to care plans.
• Ability to offer immediate note feedback to the healthcare provider.
• Ability to, quickly share their health information with family members and healthcare provider.
• Patients can review information for medical errors. This has helped them in maintaining safety.

However, this environmental change in nursing and healthcare has had its challenges too.
• Reduced interaction between the healthcare provider and the patient.
A nurse physically meeting with the patient helps improve patient’s trust on him/her.
There have also been concerns about the wellbeing of the patients who are not well-versed
with technology. This stresses them a great deal.

• Confusion
A patient might not really understand what the information means hence confusion.
Additionally, due to the confusion, the provider might receive an influx of emails from patients
that could disrupt physician’s workflow. It will be hard to attend to one patient at a time hence
more confusion from his/her end.

• Patient-provider relationship concerns.
Patient’s access to clinical records has led to care provider being worried that the notes
might offend a patient. Some doctor observations might not be positively received by the
patient. Providers are afraid that they might end up writing notes differently for this reason,
which will ultimately end up with poor healthcare provision.

Conclusion
Having the above impacts in mind, it is evident that despite the technological
advancement what the future holds in the nursing industry and healthcare as a whole is
uncertain. There are risks of reduced quality of healthcare provided but there is also
anticipation for the kind of innovations that will be made in the future.

References
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2009). Leadership roles and management functions in
nursing: Theory and application. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Thyer, G. L. (2003). Dare to be different: transformational leadership may hold the key to
reducing the nursing shortage. Journal of Nursing Management, 11(2), 76.
McCormack, B., & McCance, T. (Eds.) (2017). Person-centered practice in nursing and
health care: Theory and practice (2nd ed.). West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.