Exploring the Influence of Nursing Leadership Styles on Patient Safety

This essay explores the critical relationship between nursing leadership and patient safety in clinical settings, refuting the notion that leadership style has little impact. It defines patient safety and outlines three key leadership styles: autocratic, transformational, and laissez-faire. The paper then analyzes how each style influences patient safety, particularly in the context of medication error reduction. It highlights the importance of effective leadership, emphasizing that a nurse leader's ability to foster a safe environment, encourage research, and implement evidence-based practices directly affects patient outcomes. The essay underscores the need for appropriate leadership based on the healthcare setting and the nurses' skill levels, ultimately aiming to improve healthcare quality and reduce patient complications. This assignment is available on Desklib, a platform providing study resources.

Running head: NURSING LEADERSHIP
NURSING LEADERSHIP
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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Introduction
The importance of leadership in clinical settings for achieving care goals pertaining to
patient safety and quality care have been acknowledged for long. As the domain of patient safety
undergoes a constant evolution, the role played by leadership at organizational and individual
level has been gaining prominence. The present essay throws light on the relationship between
leadership and patient safety within the clinical setting. The essay aims to refute the statement “it
does not matter what type of leadership style is used; it has little effect on patient safety”. The
paper provides a definition of patient safety and a concise description of three leadership styles
namely and their essential characteristics. A discussion is then put forward on the relationship
between leadership and patient safety in clinical practice. A critical analysis of how each of the
leadership styles could be used for promoting patient safety in reduction of medication error in
clinical setting is undertaken.
Patient safety can be defined as preventing errors and the different ill effects related to
health care. Day by day with the increasing complications in the field of medicine, patient safety
has become a major subject of concern( Grossman & Valiga, 2016). The greater use of the
technologies and the medicines has diversified the ways of treatments but has also brought many
complications regarding the patient safety. This essay will aim on the how the nursing leadership
model can manage the patient safety. According to the researches a high quality of patient care
includes safety, timeliness, efficiency, effectiveness and patient centeredness ( Grossman &
Valiga, 2016).
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In the profession of nursing the quality of leadership provided by the leader nurse effects
many aspects of a health care facility setting. The leadership quality of the nurses can have far
reaching influences on the patient outcome and the quality of care. There are several different
types of nursing leadership. This report will throw light upon three main leadership quality of
nursing.
Autocratic leadership
This model of leadership constitutes a leader nurse or a nurse manager who will be
making all the significant decision, would instruct other peer nurses, give orders and would issue
directions to the subordinate employees. This kind of a leader would supervise the works of other
nurses and does not support the idea of collaboration or discussion with the peer nurses. This
type of leadership nursing is mainly found in the jails, military camps and other stringent
settings. An autocratic nurse would not pay heed to any questions of the employees regarding the
validity of the directions ( Grossman & Valiga, 2016).
Transformational leadership
This kind of leadership quality involves encouragement of the employees or the junior
nurses to give their best work under the influence of a leader nurse. Unlike the autocratic
leadership, this kind of a leadership focuses on motivating the junior nurses rather than imposing
them with directives. This type of a leadership in nursing believes in collaboration, team work,
creativity, research and application of the evidence based practice. This type of a leadership
quality instills motivation in one self (Huber, 2013). The self motivated employees would always
work well than those that are pressurized by the autocratic nurses. It should be kept in mind tat

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this quality would be absolutely disastrous if the leader nurse lacks the personality to bring out
the work from the employees in a friendly manner(Huber, 2013).
Lassez-Faire leadership
This kind of a leadership allows the peer nurses to work with freedom with the required
guidance. The nurse leaders allow the employees to work according to their education. The
employees are invested with the authority to take their own decisions. This leadership is effective
in case of the nurses that are highly skilled or well educated or experienced. An experienced
nurse can at least apply her past experiences and her evidence based researches in treating
critical situations (Huber, 2013). This leadership model is absolutely not suitable in case of the
unmotivated, unskilled nurses or those who lack time management, or inexperienced.
Nursing leadership and patient safety are interconnected and is directly proportional to
each other. The patient outcomes in a healthcare setting are acquired from a complex of practical
procedure via analytical data given by the technology that is cutting edge. An effective nurse
leader ensures appropriate staffing and the various resources that are required for safety of the
patients (Cherry & Jacob, 2016). At the higher level of organization a nurse leader should be able
to take different management strategies and would cater to the decision making process that
would ultimately be fruitful for the health care organization. A good leader ship quality of a
nurse can prevent and reduce hospital readmissions, patient deterioration and morbidity. A leader
nurse would be in the front line to push her limits to provide the appropriate quality of
care(Cherry & Jacob, 2016). A leader nurse would encourage the junior nurses to do research
and apply an evidence based care that is patient-focused. A good nurse leader will also reduce
the malpractices in a healthcare setting and thus provide a quality care to the patient. A high

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performance nurse would provide a physical, mental, spiritual and holistic support to a patient
and would improve the overall care delivery (Huber, 2013).
In general the role of a leader nurse is to provide improved health care facility to a
organization. A perfect leader nurse should be able to monitor all possible aspects that hinder the
patient safety. There are different nursing concerns for imparting safety to the patient. One such
concern is the medication errors (Frith et al.,2014). Lack of knowledge, improper assessment and
negligence are the reasons why the medication errors occur (Duffy, 2013). Medication errors can
be dangerous as it can cause death in some cases. It has been reported that a large number of
death occurs across the world due to the medication errors. Wrong medications can give rise to
hypersensitive reactions in patients, which can be fatal in many cases (Duffy, 2013).
An autocratic nurse may apply force to its employees to maintain the correct protocol for
applying medicines. The employees would then be doing the work carefully under pressure,
which can bring about both good and bad outcomes. A junior nurse might be very careful while
administering the medications in fear of the autocratic nurse. Again, autocratic nursing would not
support the practice of evidence based nursing that involves lot of researches (Duys, 2015). Lack
of research and knowledge and de-motivation from the autocratic nurse can cause medication
errors. In a healthcare setting which is extremely poor in health standards, a leader can take the
role of an autocratic leader and force the unmotivated workers to do their work, as it would be
the best policy to get the work done.
In case of a transformational leadership, the nurse leader would allow his employees to
do research and apply treatment accordingly. A proper research and assessment would help in
avoiding the adverse medical condition that can arise due to the medication. A leader nurse can

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self motivate or impart knowledge to her peer nurses so that the medication errors get reduced
(Kitson et al., 2013). A good nurse leader would provide knowledge and training to her peer
nurse so that they can provide a quality care. A good nurse leader would continuously supervise
her employees whether a patient had been assessed carefully.
A proper nurse leader should ensure that only skilled and experienced nurses should be
appointed in the critical care units (Morello et al., 2013). A Lassez-Faire type of leadership can
bring about good outcomes only if the nurses are skilled. Since medication error is one of the
leading causes of morbidity in hospitals, the choice of this kind of leadership might not be very
suitable. Application of medicines and critical assessment of a patient requires lots of practices
and experiences which might become a bit risky if the nurses are allowed to do anything on their
own.
From the above essay it can be concluded that different forms of leadership that have
their own characteristics, when applied suitably, help in bringing significant changes to the
culture of patient safety. It is the duty of the nurses and other health care professionals to point
out the suitable form of leadership that when applied in the clinical setting can reduce patient
complications. Furthermore it can also be pointed out that the leadership quality chosen will
depend upon the kind of health care setting where the nurse is in.

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References
Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2016). Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management.
Elsevier Health Sciences.
Duffy, J. R. (2013). Quality caring in nursing and health systems: implications for clinicians,
educators, and leaders. Springer Publishing Company.
Duys, R. A. (2015). Validation of the use of short message service (SMS) as a training tool for
anaesthetic nurses (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Town).
Frith, K. H., Anderson, E. F., Tseng, F., & Fong, E. A. (2012). Nurse staffing is an important
strategy to prevent medication errors in community hospitals. Nursing Economics, 30(5),
288.
Grossman, S., & Valiga, T. M. (2016). The new leadership challenge: Creating the future of
nursing. FA Davis.
Huber, D. (2013). Leadership and nursing care management. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Kitson, A., Marshall, A., Bassett, K., & Zeitz, K. (2013). What are the core elements of patient‐
centred care? A narrative review and synthesis of the literature from health policy,
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Morello, R. T., Lowthian, J. A., Barker, A. L., McGinnes, R., Dunt, D., & Brand, C. (2013).
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