Leadership Styles & Patient Safety

This report investigates the correlation between leadership styles and patient safety in healthcare settings. It examines three primary leadership models: transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire, analyzing their impact on patient safety outcomes. The transformational model, characterized by shared responsibility and innovative approaches, demonstrates a strong positive correlation with patient safety. The transactional model, focusing on task completion and rewards, shows an indirect relationship, while the laissez-faire model's effectiveness depends heavily on the team's self-direction and experience. The report concludes that while all models influence patient safety, the transformational model offers the most direct and positive impact. The study highlights the crucial role of nursing leadership in ensuring patient safety and suggests further research into the specific needs of patients with mental disorders, where medication can pose significant risks.

Analysis relationship between leadership styles and patient safety
1.0 Introduction
Patient safety events and efficacy in any healthcare setting are derived from a blend of
practical techniques utilizing diagnostic results provided by cutting-edge technology (Weaver
et al., 2013). The major safety events in the treatment of diseases include manageable adverse
drug events. The adverse events are expected to happen in health care system however they
should be controlled to the great extent in order to minimize the risk on patient health. With
the capacity to assess a patient quickly, modern day healthcare steers in increasing the life
span; more efforts have to be put for elderly patients and to have a better quality of treatment.
Despite all of the advances in healthcare over the decades, one constant remains, leadership.
The nurses can utilize the empirical approaches based on research findings, perceptions of
performance data and clinical involvement for the benefit of improvements in organization
(Merrill, 2015). The objective of the papers is to describe the relation between leadership in
nursing and patient safety, responsiveness, and recruiting of new professionals followed by
conclusions
2.0 Relationship between leadership styles and patient safety
According to ‘Institute of Medicine’, the term patient safety is defined as ‘the prevention of
harm to patients’ by providing an emphasis towards the delivery that prevents errors, learns
from the errors that do occur and is built on a culture of safety that involves health care
professionals, organizations, and patients (Verschueren et al., 2013). The leadership is the
ability to influence and pursue the follower by guiding, motivating and directing to achieve
organizational effectiveness. There are various styles of leadership that nurse managers have
demonstrated to lead staff nurses in hospital (Abu Al Rub & Alghamdi, 2012). Leadership is
an important component that assures organizational quality health care services, patient
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satisfaction, and financial performance. The nurse’s perception of their supervisors’
leadership styles may influence nurse’s quality of care and their ability to manage patients’
health needs appropriately. The relationship between leadership and patient safety can be
assessed based on the extent of patient satisfaction, outcomes with administration of
medication, intensity of untoward effects, risk of events and use of resources for the disease
management. According to the reports (Wong et al., 2013), the primary criteria were based on
the satisfaction of patient or caregivers. The focus of most reports was based on the
measurement of recovery, rate of mortality and mistakes happen during medication.
However, the sources that describe relationship is based on four models including
transformation leadership style, transactional leadership style, laissez-faire leadership style
and perception of effectiveness (Ahmad et al., 2014).
Transformation leadership style: The adaptive and flexible leadership model,
'transformational model’ directs in sharing the responsibilities to show a novel method for the
management of diseases. The model facilitates retaining of talented work force i.e., the nurses
and patients. The nursing leader allots the work for nurses to engage fully and to satisfy the
patients. Adequate work can be provided to the nursing staff i.e., optimum work in catering
the patients so that the nurses can finish the assigned works in time without difficulty. The
model encourages the patients and caregivers for newer thoughts and moral values. No
significant medication errors so low or no adverse events are expected. The model stimulates
the followers to increase the trust and confidence o the medication by inspiration, and
intellectual motivation (Doody & Doody, 2012). It seems the model most suits for the
patients and caregivers with adequate education background and marginal outcome could be
anticipated from the people with poor socioeconomic background.
Transactional leadership style: The model preserves the organization's existing culture,
policies, and procedures. The salient features of model includes, identification of faults in the
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responsibilities of followers especially nurses. It facilitates in exchanging the knowledge and
responsibilities between leader and follower. The model also offers rewards for the fellow
staff with timely completion of activities i.e., for exceptional contributors in the profession
(Negussie & Demissie, 2013). As the knowledge is translating from leaders to subordinates, a
significant magnitude of knowledge in terms of practical aspects is anticipated to deliver. The
model looks to be not covering the safety aspects of patients hence the relationship between
safety and nursing leadership is suboptimal. The nursing leaders are not directly involving in
assessing the safety of patients. However it indirectly reflect the relationship between the
targets by implementing the timely support in medication.
Laissez-faire leadership style: The model can work effectively when leading a staff of
motivated, highly skilled, self-directed employees who have years of experience. It also helps
greatly if the Laissez-Faire leader provides feedback as needed. The model is not useful if the
staff members are inefficient and poor abilities to grasp the skills upon motivation
(Papathanasiou et al., 2014), nurses with certain problems or dissatisfaction towards
management and inadequate work experience. Good results and thus relation can be
anticipated with a good team and with patient safety. The nursing leaders are not in direct
contact with the patients; instead, they should collect the feedback from patients on periodic
basis. If the nursing leaders fail to obtain the feedback from patients, the model cannot be
expected to work and improve the relationship between the patient’s safety and nursing
leaders. To facilitate the model to be implemented, the management should conduct periodic
trainings on nursing leaders and monitor their performance on periodic basis. The
management should also identify the nurses with poor skills, solve the problems and
encourage the nurses based on their performance.
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3.0. Conclusions
The relationship between the nursing leadership models and patient safety was discussed. It
appears that nursing models show strong influence for patient safety. The increasing numbers
of checkpoints in the loop of nurse and patient can reduce the safety. A comprehensive
understating of patient history and medication is expected to decrease the risk of adverse
events. Among the models, the transformational leadership model appears to provide better
safety compared to other models as the model offers a direct relationship between nurse and
patients. Other models offer an indirect relationship between nurse and patient safety. Nurse
leaders play a challenging role in the workplace and contribute to the effectiveness of a health
care organisation. The present paper provides clear information about the contribution of
nursing leadership styles in clinical settings. The models so far reported dealt for general
applications. However, it was not clear from the models about nurses who are involving in
patients with mental disorders. The patients with mental disorders show typical behaviour.
Infact, the medication is associated severe adverse events and hence patient safety. Therefore,
to handle such issues for antipsychotic drugs and anticancer drugs, more emphasis should be
given for nursing leaders and patients in this area.
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