An Analysis of Leadership Styles and Their Impact on Patient Safety

This report investigates the critical relationship between leadership styles and patient safety within healthcare settings. It explores how transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership models influence patient outcomes, medication error rates, and the overall efficacy of healthcare delivery. The report delves into the impact of each leadership style on nursing staff, patient satisfaction, and the prevention of adverse events. It also considers the importance of leadership in fostering a culture of safety, responsiveness, and the recruitment of new professionals. The report concludes by highlighting the significance of leadership in improving healthcare quality and patient well-being, emphasizing the need for further research and development in this area, particularly in the context of patients with mental disorders.

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 refers to ‘the prevention of
danger/harm to the heath patients’ by providing an attention towards the medication in terms
of timely administration and adequate doses. The medication errors are expected to occur to
influence the safety of patients and thus the errors should be minimized in order to promote
health during hospitalization (Verschueren et al., 2013). The leadership is the capacity of
nurses to influence and monitor the performance of subordinates by providing quality inputs,
motivating and instructing them for effective treatment in healthcare organization. There are
diverse styles of leadership that supervisors of nurse steer the staff nurses in hospital (Abu Al
1

Rub & Alghamdi, 2012). The essential aspect of leadership is to ensure quality in health
settings, efficacy of drugs for the intended use and their pharmacological action. The nurse’s
impression of their manager’s administration styles may affect attendant's nature of
consideration and their capacity to deal with patients' wellbeing needs fittingly. The
relationship amongst initiative and patient wellbeing can be evaluated taking into account the
degree of patient fulfilment, 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.
2

Transactional leadership style: The model preserves the association's current society,
arrangements, and techniques. The salient features of model includes, identification of faults
in the 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 adequately when driving a staff of
inspired, exceptionally gifted, self-coordinated representatives who have years of experience.
It also helps significantly if the Laissez-Faire pioneer gives criticism as required. 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.
3

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
pioneers assume a testing part in the work environment and add to the adequacy of a health
care organisation. The present paper gives clear data about the commitment of nursing
administration 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.
4

References
Abu Al Rub, R.F & Alghamdi, M.G (2012). The impact of leadership styles on nurses'
satisfaction and intention to stay among Saudi nurses. J Nurs Manag. 20(5), 668-78
Ahmad, E.A., Ayman, M.H., Dennis, R.S., Ahmed, A and Sultan, A (2014) Nurses’
perception of managers’ leadership styles and its associated outcomes American
Journal of Nursing Research, 2 (4), 57-62
Doody, O & Doody, C.M (2012) Transformational leadership in nursing practice. Br J Nurs.
21(20), 1212-4, 1217-8.
Merrill, K.C (2015) Leadership style and patient safety: implications for nurse managers. J
Nurs Adm. 45(6), 319-24.
Negussie, N., & Demissie, A. (2013). Relationship between leadership styles of nurse
nanagers and nurses’ job satisfaction in Jimma university specialized
Hospital. Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences, 23(1), 49–58.
Papathanasiou, I. V., Fradelos, E. C., Kleisiaris, C. F., Tsaras, K., Kalota, M. A., &
Kourkouta, L. (2014). Motivation, leadership, empowerment and confidence: Their
relation with nurses’ burnout. Materia Socio-Medica, 26(6), 405–410.
Verschueren, M., Kips, J & Euwema, M (2013). A review on leadership of head nurses and
patient safety and quality of care. Adv Health Care Manag. 14, 3-34.
Weaver, S.J., Dy, S., Lubomski, LH & Renee, W. (2013). Promoting a culture of safety. In:
Making health care safer II: An updated critical analysis of the evidence for patient
safety practices. Rockville (MD): Agency for healthcare research and quality (US).
(Evidence Reports/Technology Assessments, No. 211.) Chapter 33. Available from:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK133394/
5

Wong, C.A., Cummings, G.G & Ducharme, L (2013) The relationship between nursing
leadership and patient outcomes: a systematic review update. J Nurs Manag. 21(5),
709-24.
6