Leadership Approach: Impact of EHR on Nursing Practice and Leadership

This report examines a nurse practitioner's experience with the implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHR) in a hospital setting and the leadership approach taken to navigate the challenges. The nurse practitioner, faced with the difficulties of adapting to new technology and its impact on nursing staff performance and morale, adopted a situational leadership style. This involved assessing the needs of the nurses, communicating their concerns to management, and advocating for training to improve their understanding and use of the new system. The report highlights the importance of communication, feedback, and ethical leadership in managing change within a healthcare environment. The nurse practitioner contrasts their approach with a transformational leadership style, discussing how the latter could have been applied. The report concludes by emphasizing the benefits of adapting to change, improving competence, and enhancing service quality.

Running head: LEADERSHIP APPROACH
LEADERSHIP APPROACH
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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In the current scenario where aggressive behavior is involved among the healthcare
providers, the participants in the situation understood the fact that before giving any kind of
response there should be an eminent leader who should analyze and identify the main
problems that cause negative behavior like this (Stankunas, 2017). The reason for these
negative behaviors are often lack of concrete roles, responsibilities, operating procedures,
stress and the lack of training on management skills (Hallett & Dickens, 2017). Hospitals are
huge and the work is very important, there is no room for making any kind of minor mistakes
as it becomes a matter of life and death. Thus hospitals have several divisions and several
leaders for each division in order to maintain and ensure the systematic flow of work so that
proper cure is given to the patients for their well being and cure (Axelrod, 2018).
I have been working in a hospital as a nurse practitioner. The main jobs I have are to
understand the needs of the patients, interpret the diagnostic needed, diagnose disease and
illness. I often with the help of the doctor formulate the treatment plans and prescribe
medication during the time of emergency. I also supervise a bunch of nurses who work under
me and make sure they are working attentively to provide necessary care to the patients and I
also help them during difficult situations when they are unable to carry out their jobs or
during emergencies.
Recently, there have been many hospitals that were in news for the poor treatment and
lack of sufficient care provided by the hospitals. The lack of proper equipments and new
machines that are important and are necessary were missing in the hospitals which cost the
lives of many people (Al Knawy, 2017). The hospital I worked for did not have to face
problems like this as everyone was very careful about the job they were doing however, with
the advancement of technology and in order to develop the hospitals the management of the
hospital thought of making a change in the service department in order to ensure the patients
are treated well and are provided with utmost care which they are entitled to. Thus the

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management decided to incorporate electronic health record (EHR) in the hospitals to make
the operations easier and also faster. EHR is a digitalized version of paper chart where the
records of the patients are maintained ((Palvia, Jacks & Brown, 2015). The management
decided to change their service delivery by implementing EHR in order to provide enhanced
and quality service to the patients and also build a positive reputation for themselves.
As a nurse practitioner, the implementation of EHR was initially difficult for me and
for most of the nurses in the hospital. I had always done all my work and maintained records
on paper. However, this change in implementing an advanced technology has initially had
negative impacts on my performance as well as the performance of other nurses. Initially it
was difficult to use the device and understand how the device works as we had not been
provided proper training on how to use it effectively and efficiently. I just received a one day
training which according to me was not enough as in hospitals there is not enough time to
take training as there are many important works that need to be carried out for the patients.
This change created a problem among many nurses which resulted in the poor performance of
the nurses which decreased the level of quality in terms of services to the patients. The
inability of being able to cope up and adapt to the new technology make staffs lose
motivation and also resulted in nurses making frequent mistakes and created a stressful
environment (Peterson, 2018). This change helped me in using my own leadership style
which was situational leadership. Situational leadership is defined as the leadership of
approach of the person in a managerial position where he or she adjusts their own leadership
style in order to make positive changes and develop the change successfully (McCleskey,
2014). I tried to understand the problem and wanted to initiate a change to make sure I and
the nurses under me do not face any kind of challenge and also make sure the goals of the
hospitals are met.

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According to me, it is important for nurses to have some motivation to work and to
get this one needs to have a stress free and healthy environment. Adapting to the new
technology was problem which did create stress among the nurse. According to scholars,
when one cannot understand and adapt to changing circumstances then the worker in an
organization tend to lose motivation which exactly happened here. (Krebs et al, 2018). I feel
that this move taken by the management was unfair and unjust to all the nurses as well as me
as we did not receive proper training as in how to handle and monitor the device. I was very
stressful when I saw nurses making frequent mistakes as their mistakes could result in
something very grave like death thus I conducted a meeting and asked the nurses what was
the problem they were facing. Most of them said that it was the stress and also the lack of
motivation as they are unable to cope up with the change. Communication is considered to be
important when change occurs to understand whether the change is positive or negative
(Lewis, 2019). I communicated with them and asked them the changes they would like to
want that would help them and asked for feedbacks about the current operations of the
hospital. Feedback is considered to be an important factor to understand the change (Hall,
2015). I then made an attempt to ask the management of the hospital to take out some time so
that I could address the issue to them so that they could make some change or so that they
would give me freedom to make little changes that would align with their changes and also
help the hospital achieve their goals which was to enhance their service quality.
In order to make a suitable change and also manage the other nurses I asked the
management for a training facility which would help me and the nurses under me to
understand how to operate and understand the device which would help to make the work
easier for the nurses and also help me to learn so that I can help them when they are having
any kind of problem. According to me this would be helpful to adapt to the new change and
also learn new things which would help us grow and provide the quality of service which the

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organization is aiming for. This will be an ethical approach and also see to the needs of the
nurses in order to provide quality service.
Ethics and ethical leadership is important in an organization. One should use ethics to
make sure the decisions that are made see to the rights of the other people working as well so
that it creates a healthy environment and keep the staffs happy (Campbell, 2018). I feel that
this approach will be best and will help meet the organizational goals aligning with the needs
of the nurses.
In situations like this I usually have a situational approach to my leadership. There is
however many other approaches that could help tackle this situation. The leadership approach
that could be followed was transformational leadership approach. In this type of leadership
approach the leader usually empower their staff members and their subordinates in order to
make sure they make innovation and they create change (Braun et al, 2013). If
transformational approach would have been taken and applied then I would have treated this
issue in a different way and the first thing I would do is consider the opinions of the nurses
and give them some authority to make small changes. However, they might have wanted to
make certain changes that would not completely align with the goals of the organization.
The change which was implemented did cause some teething issues which are normal
when some change is happening. This situation affected my leadership approach and made
me take a small initiative to make the change possible aligning with the needs of the hospital.
I felt that I have the ability and capability to adjust in a changing environment and also
influence people to work towards managing the change with empathy and effective
communication. I feel this has helped me be more competent and also has made me learn new
technology which has become both beneficial for the hospital, me and the other nurses under
me to carry out the work efficiently.

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