Nurse Leadership: Who Is A Nurse A Leader? (Essay Sample)

Nurse leadership
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Institution affiliation
Executive Summary
The paper focuses on nursing leadership. The task will help in developing the necessary expertise and skills essential in the management of a health care setting as well as understanding the unique elements of nursing leadership. It originates from my role as a nurse leader in an oncology department. My aim is to improve the outcomes of the poor performance of the oncology department which is below benchmark by ensuring my team and the staffs are more engaged and motivated. In this regard, I will create a performance data scorecard to be used as outcome measures in the oncology department. The designing of the performance data scorecard will involve identifying the population of patients being addressed. It will also involve identifying the outcomes measures that are related to the identified population of patients using such indicators as performance, patient safety, and quality as well as employee engagement.
Moreover the paper discusses the required processes that drive all outcome measures and the researcher will discuss any additional indicator that would facilitate a nurse leader in monitoring the drive outcomes on a regular basis as part of the performance data scorecard. It further discusses the advantages of the created performance data scorecard. It also analyses the current trends in the healthcare related to the employee engagement and explores the relationship between the healthcare quality and employee engagement. It also discusses if the tools being used in the organization are adequately providing the needed nursing leadership with the data in regards to the employee engagement. A plan is created to improve the employee engagement based on the performance data scorecard and is not limited to the strategies, timeline, goals as well as evaluation. The best leadership practices are outlined that are considered to improve employee engagement. In conlusion,
Purpose: the primary objective of this paper is to illustrate how data scorecard can be used to ensure improved results on oncology population in a hospital and to improve performance measures by engaging the staffs and other teams.
Introduction
Leadership, as defined by scholars, means the ability to influence other people to do something. A manager in an organization has the responsibility of a leader since he or she influences how things get done in the organization. The responsibility of organizing, controlling, planning and directing are the traditional roles of any leader or manager. If a group lacks a leader, or any activity carried out without the directions of the leader, that organization or task has a high probability of failing.
A hospital is an organization which requires monitoring. For example, they have assets like ambulances, buildings, financial or accounting resources. If these resources are left in the hands of individuals without supervision, there will be misappropriation leading to failure of the hospital as a whole. For this reason, appropriate personnel who possess the skills and knowledge required are assigned the task of monitoring in the organization.
Who is a nurse a leader?
A nurse manager is a nurse who is involved in the process of influencing people and motivating them to work together to achieve a common goal. The nurse has the power to control his or her team. Unlike in management where the power gets delegated, the power of a nurse leader is from the position he holds. The expertise of the nurse which includes his knowledge and skills, his relationship with other stakeholders, ability to coarse individuals or his ability to allocate incentives in an organization determines his power (Pandilla 2012). For him to achieve his overall goal which might be personal or organizational, he should have skills to aid him in performing his duties.
Some of the skills include,
Interpersonal skills
It is the ability to relate to other people on both social and professional level. Excellent interpersonal skills ensure that communication flows smoothly from the leader to junior teams and staffs. The leader will also be in a position to receive feedback and therefore effect any changes that might need implementation.
Social awareness
In the nursing profession, one is trained to cater and care about individuals at all levels. It, therefore, means that a nurse has to care about the physical and emotional needs of a patient. For the nurse to achieve this goal, he has to have the skills to identify what other people are going through. It calls for the nurse to pay a very close attention to the patient. For the nurse leader, these skills are critical for him or her to carry out his tasks.
Management skills and management style
Though a nurse has direct power to influence his teams and staffs, he has to have the knowledge of the Directorate. The nurse has to be able to organize, direct, control and plan activities in an organization. Depending on the type of staffs that the leader is responsible for, he should adopt a management style that will ensure highest compliance and results.
Performance data scorecard for oncology population
Oncology
Oncology is the study of cancer. In today’s world, almost 50% of the food we consume, the products that we use, the lifestyle, in general, exposes us to risk of developing cancer complications. In most countries, cancer is the second leading cause of death. Statistics dictate that most men are affected by cancer more than women giving a statistics of a half and a third simultaneously. Oncology helps in diagnosing cancer, recording the stage of disease and recording the aggressive nature of cancer (Cashin-Garbatt, 2011). For years, performance evaluation in organizations has been done using the traditional methods. The benchmarks are limited or too wide in scope to realize them with accuracy. As a result, the outcome measures become difficult to monitor. For oncology patients, for example, the measures have been to track the number of radiography tests that are carried out daily by the hospital. From one side, it is a good measure of performance outcome, but this might mean reduced service on the edge of the patient due to rush to increase the number of tests carried out in a day. There is a need therefore to strike a balance between all aspects of an organization. The balanced scorecard includes measures that tell the results of actions already taken (Atkinson 2006). The scorecard brings to perfection the financial measures with operational measures on customer satisfaction, internal processes, organization’s innovation and financial performance of the organization as a whole. (HBR, September 2011). As a nursing leader, I will require a lot of information to make operations run smoothly; the balanced scorecard will help in balancing measures in question. The balanced scorecard aligns the organization around a customer-focused strategy which in turn influences the market for the hospital. The nurse leader follows up on the implementation of the policies to ensure that there is the realization of full performance and delivery of services at all levels of the organization. The scorecard helps communicate to the team members and staffs all the tasks in which they are supposed to undertake for successful operations in control of cancer ( HYPERLINK "/pubmed/12055900" \o "Journal of healthcare management / American College of Healthcare Executives." Healthc Manag. 2002)
The key objectives of developing the scorecard
* To ensure that there is full performance in radiography
* To provide cancer pain and dyspnea care
* To make sure that there are no hospital infections that take place
* To reduce the rate of mortality as a result of incomplete screening
* To boost morale of staffs and reduce absenteeism
* To reduce the idle time.
In order to achieve the above objectives, the oncology nurses, nurse practitioner, patient navigator, palliative doctors and palliative nurses, pathologists, dietitians, and diagnostic radiologists have to work in coordination. They have to ensure that information at all those levels flows in an effective and efficient manner. Gaps in the movement of information should completely be eliminated to reduce the errors that might arise as a result. The audacious results are achieved if there is the development of an efficient management information system in the organization.
By involving other non-health staffs like accountants and financial analysts in the hospital, maximum productivity and cancer patients’ service will be at the highest. The balanced scorecard will, therefore, ensure we strike a balance at all levels of the hospital. For example, an oncology nurse who examines the patient physically has to take details of the patient’s disease which should be input in the company database by the information technology practitioner for use by the accounting and finance department for pricing the services offered to the patients.
According to Bisau (2004), to ensure success in performance management system of any organization, we need to carefully decide the purpose, determine the measurement, and ensure that there is severity in the application of the model. The main aim of developing a balanced scorecard is to improve performance, therefore, if its implementation fails, we will have lost a chance to improve the organization.
Key performance indicators and processes that drive outcome measures
In this project, there are four key performance indicators which include performance, quality, patient safety and employee engagement and an infinite number of key measures. The key performance indicators selected will drive the objectives and goals of the project to success. By combining the key performance indicators by the key measures, we will have a reliable monitoring and assurance tool.