Relationship between leadership styles and patient safety

NURSING LEADERSHIP 0
Relationship between
leadership styles and
patient safety

NURSING LEADERSHIP 1
Relationship between leadership styles and patient safety
A leadership style refers to the leader’s method of delivering
direction, providing effective plans and motivating employees in the
communities. An effective leader can motivate other employees in order to
perform complex tasks and improve the overall effectiveness of the
business. The leadership style plays an important character in the area of
patient safety and leads to the performance of nurses in an effective
manner. The aim of this essay is to discuss the relationship between
leadership styles and patient safety. The major thesis statement of this
research is leadership is a fundamental skill in nursing as it contributes a
significant role in patient safety and enhancement of nurse’s skills. The
selected leadership styles are transformational and transactional styles that
have the ability to improve the performance of the employees and manage
patient safety effectively.
Leadership style is a kind of approach or strategy for providing
direction to the consumers in the workplace where the management can
enhance their businesses in an effective way. It mainly involves the total
pattern of implicit and explicit actions performed by the leaders which
manage conflicts from the system. The first research on leadership styles
was performed in the year 1939 by Kurt Lewin that led a team for
determining various styles of leadership (Boamah, Laschinger, Wong, &
Clarke, 2018). It is observed that in health communities’ leadership style
helps management for controlling and handling issues or problems related
to the nurses and lead patient safety effectively.
The term patient safety is defined as a discipline in health care
professions which applies safety techniques and processes towards the
health of the patients. Moreover, it is a kind of attribute of health
associations which reduce the health-related issues faced by the patients
and impacts of adverse actions taken by the management (Echevarria,

NURSING LEADERSHIP 2
Patterson, & Krouse, 2017). The term leadership style has the ability to
identify effective prevention techniques and intervention plans for
improving patient safety in health communities. There is a strong relation
between leadership styles and patient safety which can be reviewed with
the help of transformational and transactional leadership styles. Fischer,
(2016) examined that leadership places the individuals or patients at the
heart of the care procedure as it is able to improve the effectiveness of
prevention techniques and skills in the nurses by implementing reliable
strategies.
It is stated that an effective leadership style can influence patient
safety in a positive way that helps the patients for understanding their
situations and taking proper care from the nurses or health care providers
(Frankel, & PGCMS, 2019). Therefore, with the help of leadership styles,
the health communities can enhance the overall effectiveness and adopt the
reliable services which can reduce problems from the workplace and help
nurses for controlling health issues in the patients (Hill, 2017).
A transformational style is a part of leadership style which is pivotal in
clinical practices and able to improve the skills of the employees in the
workplace. According to Hillen, Pfaff, & Hammer, (2017) the term
transformational leadership promotes patient safety and motivates nurses in
the health communities which effectively enhance patient satisfaction. The
major attribute of transformational leaders is the motivation that helps the
other employees for growing their skills and managing more complex
situations in the workplace. In the case of transformational leadership,
leaders encourage, motivate consumers towards their roles and
responsibilities and produce changes which can help for growing the
performance of nurses and managing patient safety (McFadden, Stock, &
Gowen III, 2015). It is a kind of management style which is mainly designed
and implemented for enhancing the performance of the nurses and reducing
problems that affect patient safety.