Exploring Leadership in Healthcare: Styles, Application, and Scenarios

This essay delves into the dynamic nature of leadership in healthcare, emphasizing the need for versatile and adaptable approaches to meet evolving patient demands and challenges faced by nursing professionals. It explores various leadership styles, including transformational, situational, democratic, and aesthetic leadership, illustrating their application through real-world scenarios. Transformational leadership, which motivates nurses to exceed expectations, is effective in guiding student nurses. Situational leadership is crucial during crises, such as natural disasters, where rapid decision-making and task allocation are essential. Democratic leadership fosters inclusivity and addresses the emotional needs of staff, particularly during technological changes or conflicts. The essay concludes by highlighting the importance of leaders developing the skills and knowledge to adopt different styles based on the specific requirements of the situation to ensure patient safety, staff satisfaction, and the smooth functioning of healthcare organizations. The ability to adapt and apply these styles effectively is crucial for future healthcare leaders.

Running head: LEADESRHIP IN HEALTHCARE
LEADESRHIP IN HEALTHCARE
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Introduction:
In the modern generation, healthcare had become highly dynamic in nature and is
constantly changing because of the rising of various demands of the patients in the nation. The
nursing professionals are now facing excessive pressure of the increased number of old aged
patients who are suffering from chronic disorders (Frankel et al., 2019). They not only have to
serve the needs of the old patients but at the same time they have to follow the nursing guidelines
in every of their actions that initiate from medication errors to that of safe handling of the
patients. they also have to contribute their time to delegation, multidisciplinary teamwork and
many others which altogether makes the nursing profession quite challenging. Moreover, every
healthcare organization also expects their nursing professionals to follow evidence based
practices for which nurses need to engage in evidence based services and also continuous
professional development which is also time consuming and tiring. In such situations, nurses
might feel lost, confused as well as stressed out with loss of vision, confusion with their job role
as well as lack of skill and knowledge and many others (Asamani et al., 2016). Therefore, it
becomes important to guide the nurses in such situations and nursing leaders take up the
responsibility to guide the nurses in various ways so that the nurses can provide not only safe
and quality care to patients but they can also ensure patient satisfaction. However, a particular
leadership style can never be a[applied in every situation as the traits of the leadership ,might not
suffice the demands of leading nurses in such situation. the assignment would portray the
rationale to the remarks made and this would be done through the help of different examples and
scenarios.
Transformational leadership is considered to be the best form of leadership that motivates
the nursing professionals to work beyond their potential and reach the goals set by the

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organization. These leaders are seen to encourage nurses to provide their best at work and ensure
that they remain positive in their morale and do not develop any negative feelings about their
work. Such leaders are mainly seen to achieve this by aligning the nurses to the particular vision
and mission of the organization and guiding them in every way possible to reach the set goals.
Such leaders are seen to set themselves as the role model often exhibiting hands-on activities to
the nurses to show them how to tackle different situations in their clinical practices (Demeh et
al., 2015). By setting themselves as an example, they help the subordinates to visualize and
thereby develop traits that help to provide quality safe care to patients. Such leaders are mainly
seen to use motivation as the main weapon for making their employees learn new techniques of
clinical practices, taking positive feedback and thereby achieving mission and vision
successfully. This form of leadership can be well applied to the situations when student nurses
are placed on the ward for learning skills and ways of working in the healthcare environment.
Such new nurses always remain anxious and fearful about treating patients for the first time and
are seen to be low on confidence of transferring theoretical knowledge to practical fields. Hence,
in such situations, transformation leaders are found to provide the best guidance by working as
role models whom the new nurses can follow to gain new knowledge (Asiri et al., 2016).
Moreover, they ask for feedback from the new nurses who make them feel that are treated
respectfully and this increases their morale and dedication to their works. They constantly
motivate the new nurses so that they can overcome their fear and become confident to achieve
the set goals and adjust with the new environment.
However, transformational leadership cannot be applied in situations when there arise
crises. During the times of crisis, nursing professionals are seen to become anxious and
delusional. Here, nurse leaders need to take urgent decisions and they have to develop

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interventions by which the crisis period can be managed successfully. Transformational
leadership cannot help in such situations as leaders might not have enough time to motivate
nurses or have the liability to train them for their betterment (Backman et al., 2017). They would
not also have many scopes of communication and feedback as situations need to be handed
urgently as well as without any obstruction from any nursing professional to overcome the crisis
period. Crisis situation immediately needs immediate change in the management style of the
leaders and hence, in such situation, situational leadership is preferred. This can be simplified
with the help of an example. A scenario can be considered in this aspect like a sudden natural
disaster that had taken place like an earthquake. Huge number of people in the nation had faced
injuries and the death rates were also found to be high. The healthcare organization would face a
sudden rush of huge number of patients that the health professional teams of nurses had to attend
immediately (Oye et al., 2016). In such situations, the number of patients would obviously be
much higher in comparison to the patients that the present number of nurses can tackle. In such
areas, nurse might start feeling restless as they might not have an idea about how to approach to
such a sudden rush of patients. Here, the nursing leaders need to develop teams along with the
allocation of tasks to the team and sending certain teams for the healthcare services in the inward
patients, some teams to support the community healthcare centers. The leader would also have to
allocate the nurses as per their skills. Here, in place of transformational leadership traits, leaders
need to apply the situational leadership traits which are much more flexible and mainly
contribute by transforming the different aspects of the regular clinical practices as per the
existing working requirements and thereby meeting the immediate needs of the clinical setting.
Studies opine that situational leadership help in modifying the skills as well as the management
styles according to the needs of the situation. Mannix et al. (2015) is of the opinion that this form

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of leadership is simple to apply as it only needs the leaders in analyzing the present situation of
the organization and thereby imply the best strategies so that the healthcare system can handle
the crisis successfully. This form of leadership helps in making the nurse leaders take their own
decisions and accordingly modify their leadership traits as per the requirements of the situation.
They need to shift from their usual style of leading people, divert from their long term goals and
strategies previously set by themselves and lead people to overcome crisis successfully.
Another type of leadership that is also important in nursing is the democratic leadership
style. This style of leadership is found to be very different as it provides more significance to the
feelings and emotions of the subordinates unlike developing passion for work in transformational
leadership and overcoming crisis in situational leadership. This can be discussed with the help of
an example. For example, in the introduction of new technology like Electronic health records in
the healthcare wards might affect the senior nurses as well as the junior nurses. The new nurses
would feel scared or confused as they may feel they would not be able to handle the technology
successfully due to lack of skills and formal exposure (Allan et al., 2016). On the other hand, the
senior nurses would be upset and may even rebel against the new system thinking that they were
comfortable with the traditional way and do not require new technology. This would make them
disappointed and adamant and affect their zeal to support the organization in this change
management process. In such situations, democratic leadership would help the clinical practices
in the healthcare organization by enhancing the participation of the junior and senior employees
in the decision-making procedure and consider their emotions accordingly. The leaders should be
providing them support in which they would feel empowered and come in a negotiation
procedure (Lorber et al., 2016). The leaders would put focus on their emotions and accordingly
develop strategies by which the new technological plan can be installed and at the same time

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keeping the requests and feedbacks of the junior and senior nurses in consideration so that they
feel empowered and satisfied. However, the decision making power is always seen to reside in
the hands of the democratic leader. However, the leaders are still seen to try in making people
feel included in the organization by collection of information about their likes and dislikes, their
ideas and even their feedbacks from different of the nursing members before they finalize any
plans for the organization. These types of leaderships are found to be very helpful when nurses
burn out or there arise conflicts among the professionals, feel devalued in the organization, new
changes in the organization and many others (Sfantou et al., 2017). This leadership style makes
the nurses feel valued. When employees feel that their expectations, feedbacks and suggestions
are respected and cared in the organizations, they are seen to provide their best to their clinical
practices.
Another form of leadership that can be also found to be useful in the healthcare
organization is the aesthetic leadership. Individuals can also adopt the aesthetic leadership which
is mainly directed by a strong sense of morality as well as ethics. This leadership type can helps
individuals adapt to any form of leadership styles by directing a strong sense of ethics as well as
morality. It focuses on the development of positive work environment in the various types of the
healthcare organization (Xu et al., 2017). The nurse leaders actions need to remain based on their
moral compass as well as values which would in turn influence those people around them and
thereby help in enhancing the working environment.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it can be seen that in the healthcare organizations, often
different types of complex situations arise which cannot be managed successfully by only one

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form of leadership style. Therefore, in order to continue providing best care to patient and ensure
smooth functioning of the healthcare organizations, the leaders need to versatile and dynamic.
They need to modify their styles regarding the requirements of tackling the situations effectively.
Therefore, every leader of the future need to ensure that they develop enough knowledge and
skills by which they can adapt to any style that matches the requirements of the situations and
thereby become flexible in their approach. Therefore, with the various types of needs of the
healthcare situations, the traits can be altered in meeting the demands and the necessities of the
situation and leading the nursing professionals effectively.

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