Leading and Learning: Challenges and Strategies in Nursing Practice

This essay discusses the challenges faced in nursing practice and the strategies to overcome them. The focus is on psychological safety and growth mindset. The essay also highlights the importance of effective communication and team intelligence in promoting good patient care.

Running head: LEADING AND LEARNING 1
Leading and Learning
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliations

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My discussion in the essay will be based on the issues that were raised in the story
concerning my professional development as a leader and a learner (Gaudin and Chaliès, 2015,
pp. 41-67). In the essay, the discussion will begin with a personal reflection based on the
feedback from my tutor then, a discussion of the best strategies to solve the leadership challenges
identified in the story will follow. Finally, the essay will be concluded with what the story has
taught me.
“When Chicken soup isn’t Enough” by Suzanne Gordon is an inspiring book concerning
nursing practice and how nurses can stand up for their patients, profession and themselves. After
going through the stories, I found the story “The Real Pain” really enchanting and it challenged
my thinking as a beginning student nurse (Schneider and Pomidor, 2014, pp. 306-31). The story
is about a neurosurgical nurse with the duty of taking care of surgery patients, for example,
managing their pain (Doody and Doody 2012, pp. 1212-1218). In the story, the nurse is taking
care of a patient who had had a herniated disk surgery.
The scenario was very significant since it taught me how a practicing nurse can apply
personal values like compassion, care, communication, competence, assertiveness, accuracy and
precision and commitment to one's duty (Farh and Chen, 2018, pp. 97-110). The story enabled
me to understand that competence in very important in nursing practice Also, the scenario has
taught me that communication is very important in nursing care. As a nurse, I should foster good
communication between me and the patient in order to be able to understand the patient’s
condition well and capture some details that can be very essential in the road to recovery
(Edmondson and et.al., 2016, pp. 65-83).
The story made me feel proud as a nursing student in seeing how the nurse applied her
professional competence and assertiveness in identifying the patient’s problem and suggesting

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the best medication to be given to the patient (Fumagalli and et.al., 2015, pp.384-394).
Moreover, I felt challenged by the nurse’s ability to accurately and precisely prescribe the right
medication for the patient’s pain which was due to her competence and assertiveness (Links,
Ross and Gunderson, 2015.pp. 753-763). I felt that I needed to do more in for me to develop
competence and assertiveness for my future practice so I can be able to negotiate with the doctor
and other team members to promote good patients care.
In the scenario, the surgeon assumed that the patient was not in pain despite his years of
experience in the dealing with pain patients. The scenario was not good since the patient was
suffering because of the surgeon’s assumptions (Goold and Maslen, 2014, pp. 60-86). Also, the
surgeon had become frustrated with the patient that when the nurse talked to him concerning the
best drug to help the patient, he just agreed. However, the scenario was good since the nurse was
able to apply his competence, assertiveness and critical thinking to solve the patient’s problem.
The scenario made sense to me in that I learned that I should develop my professional
competence in order to be able to solve patient’s problems in my future practice as a nurse. I
learned that is should learn to use courage to communicate my view to my fellow healthcare in
order to help patients (Hakojärvi, Salminen and Suhonen, 2014, pp. 138-144). Moreover, the
situation made me realize that I should not assume that the senior doctors or surgeon is always
right and I should use my skills and knowledge to advise them accordingly without.
Finally, if a similar situation faces me in the future, I will apply the growth mindset to
Adsuggest the best solutions to patient’s problem to the doctor or surgeon. Team intelligence to
understand things beyond my scope like the nurse understood the best pain medication to enable
me to negotiate with the surgeon concerning the best medication (Brown and McCormack, 2016,
pp. 2921-2932). Also, psychological safety will enable me advice the surgeon on the best

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medication using my creative thinking Edmondson, courage and professional competence to
promote good patient care.
My preferred leading style is transformational leadership. Using this style, every member
of the team feels free to apply their talents, creativity, and skill to promote good patients
care .This model enables the team member to cultivate their skills to promote good healthcare
outcomes (Engelen and et.al., 2015,pp.1069-1097). In the nurse in the scenario was able to apply
her creativity professional competence to suggest the best pain medication for the patient. On the
other hand, my preferable learning style is work-based learning as it promotes personal growth.
The leadership challenges identified include psychological safety and having a fixed
mindset. Psychological safety is defined how members of a healthcare team view the
interpersonal risks consequences in the place of work. Psychological safety comprises of beliefs
and assumptions concerning the response of members of the team in case one member decides to
report a mistake, propose a new idea, seek feedback or ask a question. In this situation, the
individual puts himself or herself on the line (Guchait, Paşamehmetoğlu and Dawson, 2014, pp.
28-37. The healthcare team members should have the required safe psychological space to enable
them to feel free to promote positive healthcare outcomes by challenging their superiors without
disregard, humiliation or fear. They should also be able to pinpoint problems and stop action
where necessary and ask questions if need be (Edmondson and et.al., 2016, pp. 65-83).
In the context of the story “Real Pain”, the nurse tries to communication the surgeon
about the pain the patients are going through but the surgeon insists that the patient should not be
in pain since such pain should go away in one day and that the patient was assuming his pain
(Sethi, 2016, pp. 2323-2327). It seemed like the surgeon disregarded the nurse in that he could

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not believe that he could have more experience in pain management than him. The surgeon,
therefore, does not create a good platform for the nurse to communicate her suggestions (Sorokin
and Cadeddu, 2017.pp.231-233).
The leadership challenge of growth mindset in which the person qualities can be
increased by doing work hard. For this, they put the better techniques and induce from another’s.
The continuous way of learning can be through talent, skills, implementation of abilities and
intelligence in the workplace. In healthcare sector, the nurse can learn and enhance opportunities
by adopting leadership challenges of growth mindset. The benefits from this mindset are that
employees adopt the changes in the workplace in effective manner (Gino and Staats, 2015,
pp.110-118). The main usefulness of the growth mindset for the leaders is that can able to deal
with changes in the technology and also not face failure in future (Parke, Seo and Sherf, 2015.pp.
917). They also control the procedure and able to stay their original plan to attain their objectives
and goals.
In the story “Real Pain”, there is a challenge of fixed mindset. The surgeon ignores the
nurse's concern for the patient’s pain (Saunamäki and Engström, 2014.pp. 531-540). The surgeon
surgeons believe he knows about post-surgery pain and insists that it should clear in a short time
just like in other patients he has handled. The surgeon has a fixed mindset which makes him
believe that pain is the same for all patients. Despite the fact that the nurse talks to him about the
patient’s pain, the surgeon does not bother to come up with solutions to the problem.
According to Edmondson and et.al., (2016), there is a need to promote an environment
where all members of the healthcare team can contribute to promoting good patients care. One
way of doing this is to create a free and safe psychological space where team members can freely
challenge their seniors, ask questions and positively criticize when need be. In a safe

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psychological space, team members are also able to share concerns and information. As Jain and
et.al., (2016) asserts, removing boundaries in the clinical setting can promote psychological
safety. Additionally, team members should ensure they eliminate the difference in status in the
clinical hierarchy to promote open communication. Everyone in the team should be equal in that
everyone has something to learn from others (Hu, Erdogan and et.al., 2018, pp. 313). There is
need to train the team leaders to behave in a way that encourages open and free communications
without criticism, disregard, and fear. Furthermore, staff coaching and directing is very important
in promoting psychological safety in a team of members (Farh and Chen, 2018, pp. 97-110).
Team works are also very crucial in improving patient outcomes. Team members should be
made to understand other team members’works .
Effective communication should be fostered in order to enable all members to
communicate with each other effectively.
On the other hand, a fixed mindset can be solved by creating an environment which
fosters a growth mindset. A growth mindset can be fostered by adapting the transformational
leadership style in healthcare (Jain and et.al ., 2016, pp.1000-1011). Transformational leadership
promotes employees developments thus will be effective. Moreover, team members should be
trained to engage themselves with work within their scope and even outside their scope to
enhance personal growth (Caniëls, Semeijn and Renders, 2018, pp. 48-66).
The healthcare management should also ensure that the team members are coached to
enable them to develop a growth mindset. As with psychological safety, good communication is
very effective in promoting the growth mindset. Effective communications promote
psychological safety (Liu, Liao and Wei, 2015, pp.107-119). Therefore, for team members to
develop a growth mindset, everyone in the team should be considered as a learner and the senior

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staff should communicate with their subordinates in a way that does not instill fear or showing
disregard (Keating and Heslin, 2015, pp. 329-341). Finally, every member of the healthcare team
should learn to set learning goals instead of setting performance goals in order to promote a
growth mindset. Everyone should know that learning has no limit.

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