Challenges Facing Nursing Leadership Today

This paper explains the impact of contemporary challenges experienced in nursing leadership, major issues affecting nursing leadership, options for addressing those issues, qualities and traits of a nurse leader, and the impact of not successfully resolving the issue in future healthcare delivery.

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Issues Facing Nurse Leaders Today
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Issues Facing Nurse Leaders Today

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Introduction
Leadership refers to encouraging, upholding a rewarding culture, being attentive,
listening and inspiring others. Leadership in nursing focuses on the quality of care given to
patients as well as feedback from patients. Nurse leaders should be customer oriented and role
models to encourage a common vision within their staffs focusing on quality patient care as the
main key. The purpose of this paper is to explain the impact of contemporary challenges
experienced in nursing leadership. Firstly, the paper will explain issues experienced by nurse
leaders in their duty of patient care. Secondly, the paper will outline option for addressing the
problems from a system perspective and their effects on patient care. Thirdly, the paper will
discuss qualities and traits of a nurse leader. Finally, there will be a discussion on the impact of
not successfully resolving the issue in future health care delivery.
Major Issues Affecting Nursing Leadership
There are five major issues affecting nurse leader. This includes giving direct honest
feedback, peer today boss tomorrow, influencing others especially those that do not report to
them directly, dealing with difficult people and providing delegation to their team (Wong,
Cummings & Ducharme, 2013).
1. Giving direct feedback. Majority of nurses fear to hurt other people´s feelings
especially to the patients or reports from other nurses who report to them. The main cause for
this challenge is nurses training focuses on clinical care to patients but there is a gap in
addressing feedback delivery by the nurse leader. Incorrect feedback delivered by nurse leaders
can lead to wrong assumptions on issues affecting patients and care delivery system and
approach. This can affect the quality of care given to patients due to wrong interventions because
of wrong information delivered by a nurse leader. Wrong or lack of feedback may affect proper

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planning and health decision on approaches that are working in healthcare delivery including
those approaches that need adjustments for effective healthcare delivery to the patients (Saleh,
Mahran & Taher, 2017).
2. Peer today boss tomorrow. Majority of nurse leaders today lead teams that they
were peers with. Within the team they lead, there are other nurses who are older to them or more
experienced than them. This problem gives a nursing leader difficulty in giving directions to a
team consisting of experienced nurses, some older to them and others whom they were a peer
with. The cause of this challenge is that nurses are not trained about leadership before they are
promoted to a leadership role within healthcare organizations. The impact of this issue is
associated with the lack of individual responsibility in handling duties they are assigned to which
may affect commitment to provide quality care to patients. Different staffs within the healthcare
facility report to a nurse leader. Lack of proper coordination among departments and staffs in
terms of directives may affect the quality of care given to patients negatively (Tourigny, 2016).
3. Influencing others. Nurse leaders have a responsibility of influencing others in
terms of behaviors change to make other nurses follow what they need to get done because they
are reporting to them. Nurse leaders have to view decisions of other clinicians and nurses and
ensure that all actions they undertake comply with ethics and set performance indicators for
effective care delivery to patients. The major cause of this challenge is associated with lack of
proper training by nurses on management and organization planning to ensure the team a nurse
leader is dealing with is positively inspired. Leading a team that is not positively motivated may
lead to demoralization accomplishing their duties leading to laziness in providing quality care to
their patients with total commitment (Dickson, Bliss & Bowers, 2015).

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4. Dealing with difficult people. This is among the major challenges affecting
nursing leadership. Nurse leader experience difficulties when giving directives or instructions to
difficult persons within his or her team especially those who do not follow their duty
instructions. Difficult people at work are associated with lateness in reporting on duty,
absenteeism and incomplete duties. They affect the quality of care given to patients in terms of
timely attention to patients concerns due to their lack of commitment to their work. Difficult
people are likely to make patients feel their concern or conditions affecting their health are of
less concern to their health professions (Yorke, 2017).
5. Delegation of duties to team members. Nurse leaders are used to being a high
performer and doing care services to patients on their own. They understand how clinical or
patient care work should be done which is an advantage to their position as leaders. The
disadvantage is nurse leaders may find it challenging to delegate duties to people who interact
directly with patients especially their peers, the experienced nurses or those nurses or clinicians
who are older to them. They also fear to hurt otherś feelings and also they may not be used to
delegating duties. Lack of proper duty delegation can lead to negative patient satisfaction during
evaluations indicating care given to patients is not enough (Firdaus, 2017).
Options for addressing those issues
In order to ensure quality care is given by nurse leaders in our health facilities,
stakeholders, health partners, and other organizations who support health should focus on
training nursing leadership. The role of the nurse leader in healthcare delivery to patients should
be given priority since they supervise, coordinate care provided by a healthcare team within a
clinical setting through designing, implementation, and evaluation. Improved training on nurses
before they are promoted to leadership roles can help improve care delivered to patients through

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effective management and coordination of patients, staffs and health departments. Stakeholders
and other organizations can help improve on challenges faced by nurse leaders through
evaluation of training provided to nurses and propose on training programs for nurses such as
leadership roles other than clinical only. Addressing challenges affecting nurse leaders can help
improve the quality of care given to patients which can similarly improve patient satisfaction rate
(Mannix, Wilkes, & Daly, 2013).
Qualities and Traits of a Nurse Leader
A nurse leader needs to be a confident, self-motivated and an exemplary leader. A nurse
leader should be able to direct and coordinate other nurses and clinicians including their peers
and experienced nursing to effectively do their duties. This can be achieved through creation of
awareness to other nurses about the work they are supposed to do through constant delivery of
feedback on issues affecting care provided to patients. They should have confidence in
delegating duties to other nurses and clinicians without looking at their experience or peer
relationship. A competent nurse leader should also employ transformational leadership theory in
influencing and inspiring other nurses and medical staffs who directly interact with patients. This
can include behavior change education to make their services acceptable to patients (Mango,
2018). According to AONE Nurse Manager Competencies, nurse leaders are supposed to assess
and evaluate care provided to patients and decide on changes to ensure quality care is provided to
patients and services provided are acceptable and of satisfactory (Hutchinson & Jackson, 2013).
Impact of not Successfully Resolving the Issue in Future Healthcare Delivery
Lack of resolving the issues affecting nursing leadership may affect the quality of care
provided to patients as well as increased patient dissatisfaction from services received from
medical care providers. The issues may also lead to uncoordinated duties and healthcare

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programs and decreased performance from healthcare workers. Nursing leadership issues may
also increase the gap in identifying approaches and interventions of improving quality of care
provided to the patients and improving patient satisfaction. This can easily be achieved through
evaluation of services provided and assessing feedback from patients about the services they
received from healthcare providers (Rashoud, 2017).
Conclusion
Contemporary issues affecting nursing leadership need to be solved for effective care
delivery to patients. Nurse leaders neeed frequent trainings and education to add their knowledge
on proper coordination of health services. Stakeholders support can help in addressing challenges
experienced by nursing leadership hence helping in designing proper interventions to overcome
challenges. Lastly, nurse leaders need to be supported to build their confidence and competence
in leading other nurses and clinicians to ensure high-quality care is provided to patients.
References
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