Leadership and Management in Nursing: Personal Development Plan

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Nursing assignment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Health care professionals and organisations are required to provide effective, safe and
integrated patient care pathways. It is fundamental for health care professionals to demonstrate
effective leadership and excellent team working skills. It helps to provide high quality person-
centered care and contributes to culture of continuous quality service improvement in the
workplace. Nurses work in range of healthcare settings; therefore, they must lead and work
effectively to ensure positive patient outcomes. The essay is the reflection on the personal
learning on leadership and management. The essay then presents the personal development plan
focusing on the leadership and team working skills. The plan involves specific short and long-
term goals and the way they will be achieved. The essay then discusses the rationale on how the
personal development plan contributes to personal future development as a Nursing Associate.
The rationale is well supported with literature.
There are different ways in which the leadership is defined. In simple words, the
leadership as per my understanding is influencing the followers to accomplish the organisational
goals. I have learned from the module that two types of leadership styles are most appropriate for
nurses. The first one is the transformational leadership. This style of leadership helps to instill
faith and respect in the workplace, innovative care pathways and treat employees as human
beings. The transformational leadership style when deployed in the hospital allows transmission
of ethical principles and values, effective communication of vision, provision of challenging
goals and innovation in problem solving (Brewer et al. 2016). Transformational leadership well
suits the dynamic healthcare setting as it is highly associated with the employee and patient
satisfaction. This leadership helps initiate change using the action learning approach. In this
approach, the leaders use the supportive, directive, and democratic principles. Transformational
leadership facilitates change, by enabling methods that sustain change. Therefore, it gives rise to

2NURSING ASSIGNMENT
better outcomes for both patients and nurses. I would also like to develop the transformational
approach as it is focused on interpersonal processes between followers and the leaders. As per
my understanding, transformational leadership empowers the nurses. However, Thomas (2015)
asserts that the leaders must balance and the power and authority. The second leadership
appropriate for nurses is the transactional leadership. This leadership focus on providing day-to-
day care and routine transactions such as rewards and punishments. This leadership grounded on
theory of rewards and discipline. This leadership is concerned with the management of
predictability and order and does not guide people strategically to a leadership position. It
focuses more on executing power and authority rather than influence (Alharbi 2017).
I have learned that the nurse leaders must have strong communication, team working, and
management skills. According to Arnold and Boggs (2015), nurse leaders must enhance these
core skills and also cultivate creativity, collaboration, confidence, courage, and competence. I
agree as the health care setting is a continuously changing environment and these skills will help
one to adjust to it proactively. A nurse understanding and caring for the needs of staff can be
cognisant of the factors regulating the work environment. Such an understanding as per Ellis and
Bach (2015) ensures productivity. The learning from the module explains strong leadership is
based on power, influence, and authority. I believe that in today’s competitive environment, it is
necessary to influence others for leading rather than using power and authority. This belief aligns
with the study of Fealy et al. (2015), as it emphasized that influence is the strong pillar of
leadership. By using influence, a leader can motivate, appreciate, persuade, and negotiate with
others depending on the different situation. Using power and authority one cannot be role model
in the care environment, mentor juniors by instruction or establish a caring relationship with
others. However, it is possible by influencing skills. The good leader can use these skills to