The Significance of Nursing Leadership in Patient Safety

This essay delves into the crucial role of nursing leadership in ensuring patient safety within healthcare settings. The author, a critical care nurse, discusses the significance of leadership in delivering quality services and preventing medical errors. The essay focuses on two primary leadership styles: transformational and transactional leadership, exploring their application in creating a safe and secure environment for patients. It emphasizes that effective leaders are not born but are developed through consistent effort and training. The essay highlights how leadership influences employee behavior, promotes a positive work environment, and contributes to the overall well-being of patients. The author provides an analysis of each leadership style, offering examples and insights into their impact on patient safety and healthcare outcomes, including strategies to prevent medical errors. The essay concludes by stressing the interconnectedness of leadership and patient safety, advocating for the adoption of effective leadership strategies to enhance healthcare quality and minimize risks.

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NURSING LEADERSHIP
Essay
Student
9/5/2019

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Leadership holds great significance in the determination of the safety of patients.
Through the medium of the essay, the need for leadership in delivering the qualities of services
has been described. In this assignment a particular clinical area has been selected, where nurses
are assigned to conduct a brief discussion over prevailing issues on delivering effective services
to the patients. As a critical care nurse, I concentrated on the current topic like the positive
impact of leadership as well as on the safety in the provision of care. In this assignment, I will
be discussing two major leadership styles, which can be adopted in the development safe and
secure environment for the patients. The aim of conducting this activity is to understand the
importance of leadership in the patient and to briefly discuss the connection of patients' safety
with different leadership styles.
Efficient and great leaders are not born as leaders, rather than, they are individuals who
through their desire and passion evolve as a leader. It is an endless process where the learners
acquire skills through their consistent hard work, expertise, and training. Leadership performs
leadership procedures to motivate and persuade other people to follow their vision in their limits
or boundaries and pursuing them beyond their parameters through dedication and will power
(Fairholm, 2015). Leadership is the process of guiding the efforts of the employees in an
institution in the direction of the accomplishment of goals. Generally, the leader induces the
behavior of the employees so that the targets can be attained on time. He/ she determine the
mission of the organization and accordingly sets the overall direction for it. In the decision-
making process, employees are actively involved and the opinion subordinates are given prior
attention by the leaders. Leaders and workforces share a cordial relationship as leaders inspire
and support the subordinates in the routine basis to strive hard for the objectives, conduct
performance evaluation and provide necessary feedback so that employees can analyze their

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strengths and weakness and improve their performance. This method is critical for the
implementation effective chain of command, as there will be less ambiguity and more chances of
success. A leader promotes the interest of the employees, drives their energy as a team, and
brings various productive modifications. It is known as cultural- diversified techniques as it
involves learning of various fields and cultures. The leader is required on every level
irrespective of its field. In the same way, effective leadership is an essence of health care sectors
as it assists clinical and nursing managers or leaders to provide the quality of the services
infected-patients by maintaining the safety and providing timely medication to them. (Merrill,
2015)
The safety of the patient is the highest priority for health care institutions. The foundation
of health institutes is based on the delivery of quality services to the patients. Patients’ safety
means taking care of the patients through the preventive techniques and measures so the
accidents and unforeseen happen can be avoided. Nurses leaders and staff, play a critical role in
monitoring and controlling the adverse accidents which can negatively affect the health of the
patients. IMO, which is an Institute of Medicine, defines patient safety as the prohibition of
hazards and risk to ill patients, where the focus has been placed on the method of providing the
premium health services to the infected patients. Quality of services involves the prevention of
errors and faults, learning from the mistakes and blunders and developing and promoting safe
culture comprising heal medical expert, efficient hospital settings and alert patient (World Health
Organization, Chapter 10: Leadership and Management, 2019).
Today leadership has become a need as on the global level, nurses are facing numerous
difficulties in providing cost-effective treatment to the patients. Increment rates of mortality,
chronic illness and development infections, the emergence of advanced technology, need of the

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experts and increment in the hospital expenditure are some of the concern challenges faced by
them in curing the ill patients. In the provision of care, leadership and patient safety are
correlated to each other. Finkelman (2012) stated that effective leadership place emphasis over
the quality services to the patients, as they are core element of well-being process as through the
strong leadership plans and policies errors can be minimized to certain limit and effective care
can be provided while coordinating and understanding the perspective the families while dealing
with the issues (Finkelman & Ben-Gurion, 2012).
Leadership has become a priority in sustaining and improving the health care service to
hospitalized patients. A decisive leadership strategy leads nurses not only in maintaining the care
system for the patients but also directs them in delivering healthy and medical services to them.
Management and leadership among nursing professionals are essential for enhancing the service
and incorporation and implementation of the provision of care. Leadership is a key area of
nursing ( Cope & Murray, 2017). It leads the midwives in providing inefficient treatment on time
so that through remedial therapy, the effect of the diseases and infections can be minimized.
However, there are certain cases in which in every 4 patients have got injured during the
ambulatory care deceived to the patient in the ward (World Health Organization , Patient safety,
2019). In addition to this 2.6 million died due to a lack of medical safety. All these facts indicate
that there is a need for strong and determined leadership (Meliniotis, 2015).
By focusing on the different aspects of literature, it can be evaluated that the present
leadership can is identified in every stage of nursing. It has become necessary for the nurses to
adopt the strategies of effective leadership and provide quality of health services to the patients,
which will eventually lead to an improvement in the safety of the patients. While conducting and
performing various shades of leadership nurses can offer primary medication facilities to the ill –

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patients. It is the moral duty of the midwives to check the health of the patients regularly so that
any further development of the infections can be prevented before time. To prevent the risk and
any kind of hazards before time, Nurse Mangers should acquire leadership skills so that nurse
leaders can prepare an efficient team nursing staff who will untie solve the health care issues.
With the presence of effective leaders, the system will be under control and errors will be
minimized.
The role of clinical nurse leaders is to secure the interest of the patient through the timely
treatment and medical help as modern and young nurse leaders are the drivers of change and are
full enthusiasm and zest who are ready to bring revolution in hospitals. There many leadership
styles that are available in the concept of leadership, which can be, utilized by the nursing leaders
to maximize the satisfaction of the patients as well as of the nursing staff (AL-Dossary, 2017).
There are about 6 Different types of leadership style which can be adopted the critical nurse
leaders and they are transformational, transactional, autocratic, laissez-faire, task-oriented, and
relationship-oriented leadership in which Transformational-transactional leadership model is a
well-known multifaceted theory. Both the theories have been explained below
The transformational leadership style is widely adopted while offering medication
services to patients. It is classified as a relationship-building style as the leaders, following this
style inspires and motivate nurse staff to pursue their vision, and along with build leader and
subordinate relationships. This kind of leader can induce the attitude of staff members towards
the goal (Saravo, Netzel, & Kiesewetter, 2017). Transformational leaders conduct an interactive
session with the nursing staff and communicate the healthcare goals and objectives so aims can
be achieved in the systematic pattern with less scope of errors and facilities that can be reached
to the patient's time. This will help in attaining the constructive outcomes, along with boosting

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the morale of the employees which will automatically provide job satisfaction to the employees.
Transformational leaders are enthusiastic and persuade the subordinates to aspire for better
performance (Nursing Transformational Leadership for Patient Safety, 2019).
Such kinds of leaders work side by side to the followers and promote the creativity of the
employees. The style of leadership performed by managers has been linked with the presence of
philosophy of safety. Positive elements of transformational leadership involves the support of
higher-level managers, active participation of workers and employees in the decision making
process, promotes relation based leadership which creates safe working environment, enhances
safety and security system , maximizes the satisfaction level of the patients and reduces the
probability of errors and occurrence of major accidents (Lappalainen, Harkanen, & Kvist, 2019).
In transactional leadership, the leader acts as a change agent, who is dynamic to bring
revolution in the organization bringing modification in the system that leads to an improvement
in production. A transactional leader influences the employee to work harder and achieve the
objectives on time by various monetary incentives and additional benefits. It is a target-based
leadership as through this method, subordinates are assigned certain targets and with the
completion of the task or the targets, employees are rewarded incentives in the form of
remuneration. This technique is used to boost the morale of the employees. Transactional
leadership style is widely adopted during an emergency when the time is limited and the
decisions making becomes important (Saravo, Netzel, & Kiesewetter, 2017).
These both leadership style becomes essential, during the prevention of medical errors
and faults. Medical errors arise when the ill-patients are provided the course of wrong
medication during the treatment or when the patient is delivered the right medicines in

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unbalanced quantities. For example, MR X an elderly patient was detected with fever. He went
to his close dispensary for the blood test. During the blood test, the nurse accidentally reused the
syringe of another patient. Due to such blunder and lack of knowledge to the nurse, Mr. X got
infected severely and lost his life during the battle from illness (Centers for diseses control and
infection , 2019).
Through the effective transformational and transactional leadership, nurse leaders can
provide training to the employees so that error and blunders can be avoided be risking the life of
the patients. Nurses' leaders must monitor the performance of the nursing staff. Therefore, that
action cab is taken before time ( Scully, 2015). Critical nurse leaders must implement various
strategies to deal with the illness of the patients and should take responsibility for giving
feedback to the nursing staff ( Boamah, Spence Laschinger, Wong, & Clarke, 2018).
From the above essay, it can be concluded that Leadership and the safety and security of
the patient are interlinked to each other. Through effective leadership, nursing leaders can
provide premium health care facilities to the patients so that the effect infection can be
minimized and the mortality rate can be decreased. While practicing leadership. Nurse leaders
adopt transformational as well as transactional leadership style so that the well-being of the can
be maintained through efficient medical safety.

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Bibliography
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