Nursing Leadership: Reflective Journal on Leadership in Rehab Hospital

This reflective journal explores the author's journey as a nursing leadership student, shadowing a nursing director in a rehab hospital. It delves into observations from bed board meetings and safety huddles, emphasizing the importance of employee satisfaction and addressing staffing issues to prevent burnout. The author identifies empathy, emotional intelligence, communication skills, and optimism as crucial leadership traits. Reflections on a video about servant leadership highlight the power of inspiration over instruction and the significance of leading by example, fostering dedication and accountability within the team. The journal ultimately underscores the importance of creating a supportive and communicative environment to enhance patient safety and organizational effectiveness.

Running head: NURSING LEADERSHIP
NURSING LEADERSHIP
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Question 1:
The healthcare professionals like the nursing professionals, nursing aides and other unregulated
workers, technicians and many others are some of the main stakeholders who are responsible for
providing the service that clients receive. Hence, the duty of the leaders is to ensure ways by
which the professionals feel satisfied and continue to dedicate themselves beyond their potential
to meet the organizational goals (Chavez & yoder, 2015). Therefore, ensuring job satisfaction is
one of the most important aspect and the leaders should focus on this aspect with significance.
Therefore, in such a scenario, “employee satisfaction survey” results were found to be extremely
important as it helped the authority to understand the grievances that employees have and
thereby helps them to plan effective intervention. Therefore, with effective leadership skills, it
was important to develop interventions to help motivation for the employees like both with
internal motivation and with external motivators. Developing the organizational culture, effective
communication, feedback exchange sessions, incentives, acknowledgements of the good work,
rewards and others all were planned to develop their motivation. Staffing issues were identified
where burnouts, incompatibility with other members, blame games and others were noted. All
these were mainly found to be the result of huge pressure on the nurses to serve huge number of
patients, which were in a way dangerous for the safety of the patients (Curtis et al., 2017).
Medication errors, documentation miss-outs, improper delegation, others were noted, and all
these were mainly the result of burn out situations of the nurses as nurses were of lesser number
serving huge number of patients. Therefore, bed board meetings, huddles for safety management
and meeting of the use of electronic health records effectively by staffs – all were conducted.
The human resource department were given the responsibility to allocate more staffs, managers
were asked to develop interventions for communication development among nurses, help them to

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manage their stress effectively, training sessions were arranged for proper handling of electronic
health records and others. All these helped in developing the situation to a better condition
leading to safety environment in the hospital.
Question 2:
One of the most important traits that I try to inculcate in myself to be an effective leader is
empathy. By being empathetic towards the subordinates, one can put himself in the shoes of his
subordinates and can thereby feel the pain and difficulty that the subordinates are feeling. This
make the subordinates feel that their leaders understand their issues and can connect with them
emotionally. It helps in developing trust and bond that helps in effective collaboration and
positive outcomes (Delmatoff & Lazarus, 2014). I also have high level of emotional intelligence
by which I can control my emotions and can thereby self regulate my emotions preventing them
to be blown out in an unprofessional way. My emotional intelligence of high self regulation help
me to handle different crisis situations with poise, stability, critical thinking skills, wits and
calmness that have positive outcomes in the form of effective decisions I make. The third trait is
that I am an efficient communicator with effective verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
Effective communication skills can not only motivate employees to work beyond their potential
and increase the productivity but also has the power to overcome different conflicts effectively
(Dennis et al., 2016). I have effective feedback exchange skills that give scopes to my
subordinates to not only be allowed to express their suggestion but my feedbacks also help them
to develop their skills of safety management. The fourth trait that I possess is optimism. This
helps leaders to be source of positive energy helping them to be intrinsically helpful and
genuinely concerned about the welfare of the subordinates (Mcauliffe et al., 2017). I also try to

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avoid personal criticism and pessimistic thinking and thereby try to look for ways that would
help in gaining consensus helping people to work together efficiently and effectively as a team.
Question 3:
In the video, the speaker had wonderfully described one of the importance essences of servant
leadership that is called the issue of example. The first thing that I need to reflect on is the
interesting remark on the aspect of “instruction” and “inspiration”. The author is of the opinion
that individuals who tend to be the leader should never try to follow the path where they would
be instructing the subordinates about what to do (Halsouve, 2016). Creating of an environment
where everyone feels loved helps in developing a feeling of dedication for the leader as well as
for the organization that make them to work beyond their potential (Hyde et al., 2014).
Therefore, a leader has to influence his subordinates not by instructing but by the procedure of
inspiring them. Inspiration has the capability to make employees overcome different hardships
that come in front of them during the crisis period and help employees to face challenges with
zeal. This can never be achieved when employees are instructed as then they would only follow
the commands without putting their own innovativeness and creative mind. The internal feeling
to help organization overcome crises can only be developed when employees feel inspired and
loved. Another important aspect of the video is to say what one means and to do what one
promises. It is important for every leader to ensure that whatever he promises to provide to the
subordinates is achievable and ensure success for the subordinates by helping them to achieve
their targets. This can be linked with the morale of accountability where the leaders are
responsible about the decisions they take and the promises they make to the employees. When
the subordinates would find that the leaders are creating an organizational culture where they put
importance on their promises and maintain what they have said, they become confident and try to

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achieve their given targets and goals to fulfill their one promises and responsibilities also. Hence,
leading by example may bring success to the organization.

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References:
Chávez, E. C., & Yoder, L. H. (2015, April). Staff nurse clinical leadership: a concept analysis.
In Nursing forum(Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 90-100).
Curtis, K., Gallagher, A., Ramage, C., Montgomery, J., Martin, C., Leng, J., ... & Wrigley, M.
(2017). Using Appreciative Inquiry to develop, implement and evaluate a multi-
organisation ‘Cultivating Compassion’programme for health professionals and support
staff. Journal of Research in Nursing, 22(1-2), 150-165.
Delmatoff, J., & Lazarus, I. R. (2014). The most effective leadership style for the new landscape
of healthcare. Journal of Healthcare Management, 59(4), 245-249.
Denis, J. L., & van Gestel, N. (2016). Medical doctors in healthcare leadership: theoretical and
practical challenges. BMC health services research, 16(2), 158.
Dr.Daryl Halsouve (2016) Issue of Example, retrieved from:
https://lc.gcumedia.com/nur670/servant-leadership/v2.1/index.php
Hyde, P., Bresnen, M., Hodgson, D. E., Bailey, S., & Hassard, J. (2014). Leadership talk:
Discourses of management and leadership in healthcare. In Academy of Management
Proceedings (Vol. 2014, No. 1, p. 13925). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of
Management.
Mcauliffe, E., Ward, M., DeBrun, A., & Cunningham, U. (2017). Isqua17-2839 Collective
Leadership And Safety Cultures: Developing An Alternative Model Of Leadership For
Healthcare Teams. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 29(suppl_1), 52-53.