Essay: Leadership Styles and Patient Safety in Healthcare

This essay examines the critical relationship between leadership styles and patient safety within healthcare organizations. It begins by defining leadership and patient safety, establishing a foundation for exploring how different leadership approaches, such as transformational and transactional leadership, impact patient outcomes. The essay delves into the characteristics of each leadership style, analyzing their respective strengths and weaknesses in fostering a safe and effective healthcare environment. It highlights how transformational leaders, with their vision and ability to inspire, can create a culture of safety, while transactional leaders, through their focus on processes and adherence to standards, can also contribute to reducing errors. The paper emphasizes the significance of strong leadership in promoting an engaged workforce, encouraging innovation, and ultimately, improving the quality of care and patient safety. The essay utilizes relevant research and examples to illustrate the practical implications of these leadership styles in the clinical setting, including the importance of manager support, safety emphasis, and the utilization of data to minimize errors. In conclusion, the essay underscores the vital role of effective leadership in enhancing healthcare quality and patient safety.

Running Head: CLINICAL LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSION RELATIONSHIP
CLINICAL LEADERSHIP AND PROFESSION RELATIONSHIP
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Leadership refers to the qualities of a person that enables them to inspire other people.
Effective leadership is based on ideas that are communicated to workers by engaging them so
that they can perform their duties the way the leader wants the tasks performed. Today, both
evidence-based therapeutic and nursing are globally recognized as essential tools that are utilized
in the establishment of active healthcare organizations of high levels of productivity and high-
quality care. The management and leadership of healthcare professionals are very crucial in the
consolidation of the quality and assimilation of care. Effective leadership can be used in the
achievement of quality and successful outcomes.
How Leadership Can Influence the Safety of Patients
There exists a strong bond between the board of activities in hospitals and the
performance on the safety metrics. The hospital boards affect the quality and safety of patients
primarily through their strategic initiatives. However, management can improve patient safety
through one on one interaction with the frontline workers (Regan, Laschinger, & Wong, 2016).
Leadership walk rounds visit the nurses in their working units and frankly discuss the issues
affecting the safety outcomes of patients. Hospital leadership also affects the safety of patients
directly through addressing the safety concerns through the management of disruptive and
unprofessional conduct by the clinicians (Regan, Laschinger, & Wong, 2016). Since the boards
have an oversight on the incompetent clinicians, and hence they ensure that the clinicians do not
expose the patients to danger. This paper will discuss the some leadership styles and how they
impact on the safety of the patients’ in healthcare.
Patient safety is the prevention of harms that can be caused to the patients. More
emphasis is placed on the systems of healthcare delivery that is meant to prevent medication

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errors, learning from the most common mistakes and builds on a culture of safety that comprises
the healthcare professionals and patients (Daly,et al., 2014). Strong leadership is vital in an
organization since it can lead to an engaged workforce. It can also spur innovation and creativity
where problems stump other organizations. Strong leadership can also empower leaders to take
ownership and pride in their work instead of passing the burden to other people (Bender, 2016).
Any healthcare institution that places priority in strong leadership is likely to reap the gains in
every aspect of their workforce and the performance of the company.
Nowadays, there is an excellent acknowledgment of evidence-based medicine and
nursing as tools for the establishment of active healthcare organizations of improved productivity
and patient safety (Waring, 2014). Management and leadership of healthcare are essential in
strengthening the quality of services delivered to patients. Transformational leadership style is
very crucial in the nursing environment. A transformational leader is supposed to possess several
leadership skills including;
A well-stated vision
Transformational leaders have an idea of what they want to achieve and the capability of
communicating the concept so that everybody in the institution comprehends what is required to
achieve the set vision (Twigg & McCullough, 2014).
Courageous leader
A transformational leader needs to have the courage and be willing to take new
challenges, take chances, make sound decisions, and go for what they believe. Transformational
leaders are also known to have the courage to create a vision which is needed for them to achieve
their goals (Nishioka, Coe, Hanita, & Moscato, 2014).

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Transformational leaders are self-motivated-the leaders fuel their person from within
themselves. They are passionate and also have a motivation that people can feel and feed off it.
They are also inspirational in that, based on their encouragement; they can inspire other people
and get them into their schedule (Satiani, et al., 2014). Transformational leaders have a personal
interaction with the workers. They can impact a simple ‘hi’ in a conversation, and this makes the
workers feel more valuable and hence want to be part of the vision that a transformational leader
has created for the institution.
Setting Standard for the Institution
A transformational leader can model an institutional standard that they feel is important
and that they expect each worker to adhere to. The leaders can communicate their mission and
vision, expectations, and the method by which the standard would be applied throughout the
institution. While it is a piece buzzword, activities do talk more intense than words — and when
pioneers live as per the standard they set, individuals pay heed (Kuhlmann & von Knorring,
2014). Pioneers frequently guarantee a great deal, yet it is the finish that genuinely affects a
pioneer’s capacity to bring out change and get purchase in. In transactional leadership, the leader
acts as a manager of change.
Transformational leaders can convince their followers in striving for higher performance.
The leaders are respected due to their positive leadership attributes. Their leadership styles are
associated with the increased climate in nursing care. Nurses feel like part of the institution and
hence work with motivation (Miskelly & Duncan, 2014). To ensure that there are minimal errors
made when this leadership style is used, the leaders view mistakes made by nurses as typical and
not a form of incompetence. Nurses make minimal therapeutic errors and hence contribute to
increased safety for the patients, increased client satisfaction, and also reduction in the adverse

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occurrences. The critical safety dimensions include manager support, safety emphasis, utilization
of safety data, and the utilization of pharmacist support and safety for the workers.
Transformational leadership highly encourages a blameless system whereby there are very
minimal medication errors (Frankel & PGCMS, 2019). The errors are otherwise viewed as
learning opportunities rather than forms of incompetence. The latter helps the nurses not to make
mistakes in the future and therefore increase in the safety of the patients. The selection of this
type of leadership has very significant impacts on the outcome of a patient.
Transactional leadership style is also crucial in the clinical setting. This leadership style
focuses on supervision, performance, and organization. It is an essential integral part of the full
range leadership model. In this style of leadership, the leaders promote compliance by the
affiliates via rewards and punishments. By, using rewards and punishments, leaders can keep the
workers motivated for short periods (Bender, 2016). Unlike the case of transformational
leadership, transactional leadership approach is not after changing the future, but they are after
keeping things the same. Leaders who use transactional leadership style pay much attention to
the work of the affiliates for them to find deviations and faults (Frankel & PGCMS, 2019). It is
essential in a nursing environment since it emphasizes a specific manner in which processes have
to follow.
A transactional leader has several attributes that make his skills more adorable in an
organization. The latter includes;
Setting goals and articulating explicit agreements regarding what the leader requires from the
affiliates and how the members will be rewarded for their hard work and commitment. The
leaders also focus on increasing the effectiveness and efficiency in the established routines and
techniques and are more concerned with the existing rules and regulations (Kuhlmann & von

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Knorring, 2014). The leaders are less concerned with making any significant changes in the
structure of the institution. They also operate more efficiently in institutions that have developed
past the chaotic. Transactional leaders are also able to establish and standardize practices that
will assist the institution in achieving its objectives and emphasizes goals, the efficiency of
operations, and increased productivity (Kuhlmann & von Knorring, 2014).
Impacts on Patient Safety
Transactional leadership is passive. The leadership style is associated with the
establishment of criteria for rewarding the affiliates and maintenance of the status quo. The
impacts of transactional leadership are efficient and directive. Through this style of leadership,
success is explicitly achieved. Transactional leadership is associated with improved healthcare
services. To ensure that there is safety in medication and positive impacts on medication errors,
transactional leadership style is highly recommended (Miskelly & Duncan, 2014). As a result of
this leadership style, the nurses work keenly to avoid any mistakes that can happen when they
are carrying out their duties. Nurses here learn through the minor therapeutic mistakes made in
the past and are bound to make small mistakes or no mistakes at all.
Conclusion
Effective leadership plays a vital role in enhancing quality healthcare and nursing.
Leadership styles are core elements in an integrated provision of patient care from the patients
and nurses. Effective leadership fosters improved quality work. Transformational leadership
style is essential since the leaders have a vision of what they want to achieve and hence can use
their persuasive power and excellent managerial skills to make affiliates work correctly. It is
vital for institutions to source people with suitable leadership styles who will take the healthcare
institutions to an advanced level and hence increase the safety of the patients.

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