University Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice Essay

This essay delves into the critical aspects of leadership and management within the nursing profession, examining the core concepts, skills, and strategies essential for effective practice. The essay begins by defining leadership as the process of influencing people to accomplish goals, highlighting the importance of vision, communication, and group dynamics. Management is defined as the integration and coordination of resources through planning, organizing, and controlling. The essay then explores the skills and activities of nurse leadership and management, emphasizing the need for understanding organizational culture, empathy, listening skills, staff support, mentoring, and the ability to inspire and encourage. A significant portion of the essay is dedicated to the concept of multitasking in nursing practice, discussing its impact on patient care and workplace efficiency. The essay concludes by emphasizing the crucial role of nurse leaders and managers in ensuring high-quality, safe, and efficient care delivery, especially within the context of an increasingly complex and demanding healthcare environment.

Leadership and Management in the Nursing Practice
University
Name
Date

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 2
Table of Contents
Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................2
Section 1.....................................................................................................................................3
Introduction............................................................................................................................3
Nursing management and leadership......................................................................................3
Skills and activities of nurse leadership and management.....................................................5
Multi-task leadership and management skills in nursing practice..........................................7
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................8
Section 2.....................................................................................................................................9
Introduction............................................................................................................................9
Nursing scenario.....................................................................................................................9
Application of nursing leadership and management principles...........................................10
Benefits to the workplace.....................................................................................................11
Conclusion............................................................................................................................12
References................................................................................................................................13

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 3
Leadership and Management in the Nursing Practice
Section 1
Introduction
As stated by Huber (2018), leadership is a fundamental process of influencing people and
meeting goals, the underlying concepts pertain influence, vision, group process and offering
communication to those being led while management pertains integration and coordination of
resources through underlying functions of planning, organizing, coordinating, directing and
controlling. The inherent health care systems’ diversity and complexity offer an avenue for
the provision of quality safe and effective care (Porter‐O’Grady & Malloch, 2011). These
changes on the evolving systems, high patient turnover, technology, disease acuity and
increased health care cost posses’ challenges to be addressed. This necessitates a priority for
sustaining care quality leading to a greater shift in delivery of care, health care models
application and a surge of health care players especially nurses (ACN, 2015). Thus in this
view being a leader in the health care professional is essential in the care continuum arena.
Leaders in the nursing profession are hence challenged to take problem-solving abilities and
make decisions which have impacts on health care delivery and offer decisions about aspects
of health care costs and care access in their domain (Ledlow & Stephens, 2017). This review
assesses leadership and management practice in the health care workplace. Further, an
exploration of skills in this context and precepts of multi-tasking towards leadership and
management skills in the nursing practice arena are reviewed.
Nursing management and leadership
Leadership is critical in the nursing profession, nurses need to offer high-quality care and
ensure the safety of the patient while engaging in leadership avenues. Leadership is defined
as influence and the application of skills able to induce goal attainment. A leader is geared
with the role of influencing activities in an organized group and directs effort towards
attaining specific goals and achievements. Nursing leadership portend as a multifaceted tool.
It entails providing direction, motivating, supporting, effective communication, collaboration
and advocating for optimal delivery of care on patients outcome. It is essentially offering how
things are supposed in be done in a guiding way and underlying course of action (James,
2010).

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 4
Nurses are part and parcel of health intradisciplinary teams and need to showcase skills
especially in this arena of patient acuity, complex care environment and changing patient care
dynamics. According to the Institute of Medicine-IOM (2011), nurses need to lead
interprofessional teams and the overall health care system. Moreover, effective nurse
leadership play a role in patient outcomes and care quality. Effective communication is key to
nurse leadership and is central in influencing others to improve care quality in the clinical
care arena ().
Nurse leadership necessitates an environment which offers vision and allows motivations
staff and empowers them. Nurse leaders are essential agents in the health care team, for this
reason, they need to also prerequisite skills such as valuing, self-confidence and being able to
build working and string effective teams (Daly et al., 2014).
Effective nurse management leadership and management aspects have been entrenched
to a wider range of functions; there is a need for hospital care system performance towards
the attainment of health reforms in timely delivery of care integrity of the system and the
overall component of the system (Ledlow & Stephens, 2017). Clinical areas in hospital
settings are key in health care organizations. The key relevance of effective leadership skills
and managerial abilities are geared towards high-quality care which is consistent with the
provision of safe and efficient care. Studies have showcased the underlying importance of
engagement of nurse clinical leadership roles in improving the overall patient safety and
quality of care services. In an Australian example, the underlying nursing recommendations
based on the Garling report on Nurse Unit Manager views and asserts that clinical leadership
skills of about 70% are essential in applying to clinical duties while 30% be spent on
administrative and managerial duties (Garling, 2010). Further, in a similar study in France,
similar recommendations have been postulated on allocating more time in caring for patients
and providing clinical leadership in the wards of care (Francis, 2013).
In the current contemporary health care arena, there is increasing scrutiny and strain on
the delivery of care. The increased demand has put pressure on health care professionals.
Hospitals are viewed as critical areas where the young and old who are among the common
vulnerable are exposed to the adverse care process. There is n increased scrutiny in this
domain leading to aspects of accountability, visibility and scrutiny (Francis, 2013). These
increased levels of scrutiny have put more emphasis on the health care professionals nurses
included in providing monitoring standards, developing and intimating better avenues of

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 5
improving care. This process calls for critical leadership skills to promote and engage key
activities such as evidence-based practise into the nursing practices key for care delivery.
These avenues are well-coordinated through effective leadership and management of health
care processes (Raban & Westbrook 2014). Thus nurse leaderships and management traits are
fundamental in the current health care domain.
Skills and activities of nurse leadership and management
A good leader in the nursing practice can inspire others to work in pursuit of a common
goal in the care arena. To be an effective leader there is a need for having a distinct set of
personal qualities such as courage, integrity, initiative and the ability to handle stressfully
scenarios and issues. In the current domain of the evolving health care environment, creative
leadership is imperative. The need to think and act beyond the normal boundaries limits the
potential and avoiding professional impediments is paramount ().
As a nurse, there are essential skills which are key in delivering leadership and
management practices. These skills and activities in the nursing domain entail;
Understanding organizational culture’
Nurses play a fundamental role in the organization set up. They are critical in
understanding how organization work and align themselves with goals. Having an
understanding of organizational culture as a nurse is an effective trait crucial for navigating
various processes in the nursing leadership and management arena.
Showing empathy
As a leader, understanding that peers, higher in the hierarchy and all those concern are
worthy of your respect here is need to always listen without judgement. As a leader taking the
time to listen to your staff diligently is essential. There is a need for taking their feelings and
perspectives into account.
Learning to listen
Listening skills are essential in the nursing process leadership. There is a need to separate
the thinking perception of a person and focus on what they are saying, in this, they feel
valued. There is need for listening and asking questions for feedback process as it allows
engagement in the care process hence showcasing leadership avenues.

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 6
Staff support
As a leader in the nursing arena, supporting staff is a fundamental avenue for enhancing
focused care delivery. It is crucial to provide a supportive environment to staff and other
nurses to try new skills. Further. The ability to learn new methods is geared towards enabling
them to develop key skills competently and effectively. Moreover offering time to explore
each other is key to improve their overall comprehension aspects.
Being a mentor
Being a leader calls for developing and entrenching mentoring skills. Doing one’s best is
essential in getting bests returns from the team they are leading. Adopting leadership styles to
suit this aspect is essential. Further, taking time to see and check their progress and offering
role modelling is essential in entrenching the necessary skills in the organization.
Inspire and encourage
The need for keeping staff always motivated in engaging in high-quality care is
paramount in nurse leadership skills. Often aspects of burn out and absenteeism are careful
skills to be entrenched in the nurse; leadership arena. As a leader, influencing performance of
employees and ensuring their work contributes positively is key.
Moreover, also, nurse leaders and manager’s posse’s aspects of self-awareness entailing
the ability to read own feelings and its effect on others. Being mindful of other employees
staff in the care domain is essential. The ability to keep time is an essential and fundamental
skill which influences the ability to undertake key management functions such as organizing,
planning, prioritizing and executing tasks. Successful leaders in the nursing arena need to
enhance collaboration, delegation and traits of resolving conflicts which facilitate smooth
work progress within the teams (Roche, Duffield, Dimitrelis & Frew, 2015)
Focusing on patients care through the provision of best available care is vital in nurse
leadership traits. An effective team leader often fights and advocates for both the patients and
the health care teams through welfare support for patients and ensuring that health care staff
work in a safe environment (DeWit & Williams, 2013). These skills and traits are essential in
the clinical activities to enhance and define leadership and management aspects in care
delivery. In the advent of increased roles and responsibilities, it is inherent that nurse leaders
and managers are often engaged in activities of administration, planning and budgeting and

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 7
staff management. These essential roles necessitate them to juggle and multi-tasking to meet
the rising needs and the diverse care avenue in their domain.
Multi-task leadership and management skills in nursing practice
Nursing care practices is an essential aspect in the care process, entailing provision of
patient-centric care, efficiently and cost-effectively. In the current contemporary workplace
settings, multitasking has been entrenched into practice due to increased environmental
workplace pressure to offer a concentration in various avenues. Multi-tasking in nursing
practices has been viewed in the context of the patient to be an essential trait (Yen et al.,
2018). Aspects of multi-tasking offer organization to improve their quality service, safety,
workflow and patient care duties.
Multi-tasking is an essential element in the health care domain and is prevalent in
hospital wards and emergency settings. Studies demonstrate that multitasking reduces the
overall time for accuracy and efficacy of how individuals complete the tasks. Voluntary
multitasking in the health care arena is essential inn reducing error commission compared to
aspects of forced multitasking (Pihlainen, Kivinen & Lammintakanen, 2016). In avenues
where multi-tasking is paramount, nursing leadership skills of allowing the staff to engage
without any control are essential in reducing the likelihood of errors. Entrenching
intervention which promotes and facilitate this aspect is essential in enabling the nurses and
other care staff to be less vulnerable in making errors (Raban & Westbrook, 2014).
Studies have demonstrated that multitasking is behavioural responses from employees
due to insufficient design processes. A case example entails a qualitative study among
paediatrician nurses and administration of medication, the study identified that nurses were
required to undertaken multitasking upon prompts of the consultant as this was an avenue to
communicate with the clinicians. In this presentation, the asynchronous communication
between the nurse and consultant was not well related leading to aspects of efficacy if the
nurse blocked the prompt to find clinical later (Colligan & Bass, 2012). There is a need for
consideration of the benefits of multi-tasking. A case example is observed by the ability of
emergency department nurses to be able to multi-tasks is linked to improved patient care and
transfer processes, indicating that multi-task can be a positive aspect also (Weigl et al., 2016).

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 8
Thus, the organizational design process and benefits of multi-tasking need to be
considered diligently by nurse leaders and managers, to allow an avenue for care delivery
with priority on safe care. nurse leaders managers need o to entrench robust approaches
which facilitate multi-tasking approach sin the care settings as it can have potential effects in
the care practice.
Conclusion
The roles of nurse leaders and managers are essential in care practice. Nurse leadership
and clinical leadership are essential and have impacts on care services. It facilitates and
necessitates for visionary practices and staff motivation and empowerment avenues. The
leaders must entrench the key underlying skills which wile b crucial in delivering care to the
diverse health care continuum. A key critical skill in nursing practice is the multi-tasking of
tasks. Being prevalent among nurse leaders and managers, they are entangled in aspects of
management entailing, planning coordination and execution of activities reading to
entrenching of multi-tasking skills in their domain. Incorporating this skill in the care practice
and leadership framework is essential for the benefit of the care continuum.

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 9
Section 2
Introduction
Leadership and management entail aspects of increased needs for care in the work
environment affecting outcomes of care. Leadership management employed in this avenue
has a critical implication on the roles of nurses and caregivers in the care setting. In managing
these fundamental aspects of care, leadership styles have been formulated towards adjusting
to improving the quality of care of patients (Robinson et al., 2018). Being a nurse leader
necessitates adequate complex skills which have an impact on staff and patients. Leaders
often exert influence through personal behavioural mechanism and strategies in implementing
leadership scenarios. Decisions on tasks delegation and performance can have an overall
impact on the care process and hamper the quality of care. As a nurse leader and manager,
assessment of how behavioural and manner of undertaking tasks needs to be assessed
(Huotari, 2018). In this review, the clinical case scenario is being focussed to explore and
assess the influence of leadership and underlying mechanism which come into play in the
nursing care practice.
Nursing scenario
In this clinical scenario, before I completed the practicum unit, I was placed at the
intermediate care unit. On this occasion during the first meeting, Jefferson Cathy, the unit
manager, held the regular briefing meeting and informed us the nurses that the patient
satisfaction score had fallen below 2 points in the last month. Due to this fall, she requested
everyone to engage on a reflection exercise on engagements held over the past month and
submit three key concerns to the in-charge nurses due on the next meeting; the goal was to
increase the rating score by at least 3 points in the next quarter.
Jane the night shift nurse sought a plan on how to engage the nurses and decided to
engage the nurses each one individually over the next month before the next sitting on
problems leading to the low ratings in her shift. To improve ratings Jane decides to ask every
nurse to a coffee and discuss over the issue. She made a summary of the responses and
reviewed them with all nurses and found out the top three issues after getting a 100%
response rate.

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 10
Maggy the evening shift nurse made possible reasons and made sole selection
highlighting the top three issues affecting the low ratings. She informed the nurses in the shift
on the issues she had picked and told them she would submit them to the nurse unit manager.
When questioned by nurses who were absent she brushed them and said she was not
bothered.
The night shift nurse Susan, allowed the nurses to make their reasons independently and
she through that the nurses had the right to accept or refuse to participate. She stated that the
responses might be personal and she assured the nurses that she will stand by them. She
managed to achieve 100% participation among the nurses.
Application of nursing leadership and management principles
As a unit case manager, Cathy Jefferson role is to guide those working with her in a
manner that contributes to the welfare of the patients. Being the lead role in this unit,
regulating all the activities being undertaken is essential. The nurse manager employed
delegation of responsibilities and coordinating the nurses in different shifts to submit their
responses to their in-charge nurses for the responses to be submitted in the next meeting for
deliberation.
In applying fundamental nurse leadership and management style principles, the three
nurses explored three varied styles of management in their domain shifts. Nurse in charge of
Jane has employed a democratic style of leadership couple with some aspects of key nursing
skills. She has allowed everyone to participate by engaging the nurses in her shift in a
democratic process of seeking their views and views every nurse as important. Later on, she
seeks consensus on the underlying issues rose to reach consensus. Further, she employs the
affiliative leadership style where she creates an inherent relationship with the team members
and bonding to have a consensus approach in identifying issues raised. Further, she implores
affective skills by understanding her colleagues and seeking to reason together in unison
showing skills of empathy, listening to her colleagues.
Maggy the in-charge nurse employs an authoritarian style of leadership style, she has
given instructions to her colleagues by drawing up the issues she feels are ailing the nursing
practice in her shift and asks everyone that anybody who would have any questions can
address them to the nurse care unit manager. This is detrimental in that the nurses were not

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 11
given any opportunity to be heard which might have negative effects on the overall care
process and issues identification which are reflective on the nursing practice.
Susan the night shift nurse employed a laisezz faire style of leadership in addressing and
collecting the issues among nurse in her shift. In this leadership and management style, staffs
are encouraged to work independently without any form of supervision while giving
minimum directions. Susan has requested her staff to independently identify the issues they
are facing as some might be personal and she will stand by them while they will submit the
responses to the nurse unit managers. This approach saw a 100% response rate and
participation by the nurses.
Benefits to the workplace
The above case study demonstrates various aspects of leadership and management styles
being employed in the health care workplace practice. The nurse unit case manager has
employed a democratic approach to leadership. She has delegated her responsibilities to the
in-charge nurses which are a critical managerial task in the nurse management practice. In
this step, the nurse unit manager will collect the responses from her staff before coming up
with a common issue. this aspect of leadership was also fundamental to in-charge nurse unit
Jane whom she sought consensus among her colleagues before coming up with a list of
identified three issues likely to improve patient outcome in the care delivery. Democratic
style of leadership in the nursing practice is effective as it entrenches employee valuation and
they give in to their bests. The input of the staff is essential for the effective application of
this style in the care practice (Cilek, 2019).
The authoritarian style of leadership employed by in-charge nurse Maggy is retrospective
in the nursing care process when dealing with staff. In this aspect the nurse leader decides
everything for herself, giving orders to the rests of the team to follow the laid down rules and
engagement. The input of the staff is not considered. This style is effective in emergency
contexts in nursing care as it ensures swift actions and less time for engaging. It is
detrimental to apply this management style in the nursing care practice as it undermines the
aspects of promoting effective communication, trusts and collaboration (Latif, Baghoor &
Rasool, 2017).

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 12
The last management style in reviewing the case scenario entails laisseze Fairee
leadership style employed by nurse in-charge, Susan. This style allows the employment of a
hands-off approach in how they do things without any supervision from managers and
leaders. Minimal leadership is offered to the staff while permitting them to undertake larger
proportion of work in organizing themselves. The employees in this style are responsible for
the decisions in their care practice. This leadership in nursing practice is essential in aspects
of highly skilled staff, able and motivated who require minimal supervision. Applying this
method to staff who cannot be able to manage time can lead to a negative outcome, thus
critical analysis needs to be undertaken before its deployment (Worthy, Dawson & Tavakoli,
2020).
Conclusion
Nurse leadership and management practices are essential in determining the care output
results. Managers and leaders have to regulate and make key decisions in the care process.
Poor balance of the essential aspects of leadership and skills can lead to poor patient
outcomes. The morale of the staff is often lowered when there is an occurrence of low
productivity levels. Understanding the staff and employing the right leadership styles and
skills is over ally fundamentally in the care practice. In aspects combination of various
leadership styles and skills can lead to positive patient outcomes. Hence as a nurse leader
entrenching these skills into practice makes a fundamental contribution to the care practice
and improving the level of outcome for your patients is essential. Patient priority needs to be
the underlying goal of improving care practice in health care. Improved patient outcomes
result from the application of effective managerial and leadership skills to resources available
and applying evidence-based approaches in the care process.

Leadership and Management in Nursing Practice 13
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