Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management.

Posted: November 2nd, 2022

Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management.

In this assignment, you will be writing a 1,000-1,250 word paper describing the differing approaches of nursing leaders and managers to issues in practice. To complete this assignment, do the following:
Select an issue from the following list: bullying, unit closers and restructuring, floating, nurse turnover, nurse staffing ratios, use of contract employees (i.e., registry and travel nurses), or magnet designation.

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Describe the selected issue. Discuss how it impacts quality of care and patient safety in the setting in which it occurs.
Discuss how professional standards of practice should be demonstrated in this situation to help rectify the issue or maintain professional conduct.
Explain the differing roles of nursing leaders and nursing managers in this instance and discuss the different approaches they take to address the selected issue and promote patient safety and quality care. Support your rationale by using the theories, principles, skills, and roles of the leader versus manager described in your readings.
Discuss what additional aspects mangers and leaders would need to initiate in order to ensure professionalism throughout diverse health care settings while addressing the selected issue.
Describe a leadership style that would best address the chosen issue. Explain why this style could be successful in this setting.
Use at least three peer-reviewed journal articles other than those presented in your text or provided in the course.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. Refer to the LopesWrite Technical Support articles for assistance.
This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competencies:
RN to BSN
1.1: Exemplify professionalism in diverse health care settings.
1.3: Exercise professional nursing leadership and management roles in the promotion of patient safety and quality care.
3.4: Demonstrate professional standards of practice.

A concept analysis on teamwork

Introduction

The health care environment has become massive with different medical professions. All the care provided is not the result of a single individual or profession. Rather, it is the result of many professions working together as a team dedicated to achieving the desired care outcomes. If one profession does good work and another profession does bad work, then it would be difficult to achieve the desired care outcomes. Each individual working on one aspect to provide care must understand the capabilities and needs of the other professions and collaborate accordingly. For instance, a nurse can collect tissue samples and order for a test, but the laboratory technician must conduct the required test for the results to be meaningful (Yoder-Wise, 2013). Therefore, many medical professionals work together in the health care environment to achieve the desired care outcomes in terms of quality, safety and recovery. The present paper discusses the concept of teamwork as it applies to nursing practice.

Definition and uses of the concept

The concept of teamwork is defined as the capacity to leverage cooperation and collaboration to improve and enhance productivity. The concept is used to derive benefits for both medical personnel and the organization to include patients. It derives benefits for medical personnel through expanding their professional knowledge. Collaborating with medical personnel of different professions and expertise offers an abundance of learning opportunities for nurses. In addition, teamwork reduces personal responsibility should anything go wrong because the burden of failing falls on all team members and not on a single individual. In fact, the possibility of failure is greatly diminished when nurses provide care as part of a team since a larger knowledge repository is offered and problems are easier to identify and resolve as more people monitor the care delivery. Other uses of teamwork among nurse personnel include increased opportunities for professional development, and social contract in the workplace (Ellis & Bach, 2015).

Teamwork derives benefits for the medical organization and patients through improving moral within the facility thus leading to increased productivity. In fact, teamwork among medical personnel creates greater accountability and encourages innovation. Besides that, it promotes accountability, dependability, motivation, commitment and collaboration. Also, imposing responsibilities on the team members eliminates/reduces the need for lower management levels, improves delegation and increases individual strengths (Catalano, 2015).

Defining attributes, antecedents and consequences

Effective teams must exhibit certain attributes that help them achieve success. These attributes are based on the awareness that teams are comprised of individuals whose complementary skills are committed towards a common purpose, objectives and approach for which the team members are mutually accountable. Seven attributes have been identified as important for effective teamwork. The first attribute is direction whereby a team with a clear sense of what it needs to achieve and how to define a successful outcome. As such, the team must first decide on its goals and desired outcomes, with flexibility on how to proceed. The second attribute is honest and open communication as this helps in building a sense of camaraderie among the members. Free communication helps the members to be more comfortable in sharing ideas and insights. The communication content is typically irrelevant. Rather, the manner in which the communication is conducted would determine the effectiveness of the team by making them comfortable to interact. An important part of communication is listening as a sign of respect for the conversation partner and way of finding out new information. Also, respect creates the perception that the conversation partner is valuable. The third attribute is having defined roles. Although roles could shift after the team has been formed, but it is important to assemble the right complement of thinking styles and skill sets that anticipate the team objectives and functions. There is a need to have a good handle on the roles of prospective members before staffing them (Ellis & Bach, 2015).

The fourth attribute is mutual accountability. A good team must accept responsibility as a team and as individuals. They should not blame each other for team failures and mistakes. In addition, the members should not spend time on personal justifications. Rather, they should collectively celebrate the team successes and recognize the contributions and performance that each one of them makes to the total team performance. The fifth attribute is having common goals whereby the individual members place the common goals above their individual interests. Although scaring individual goals is good for the personal morale of the team members, they must that the team can only succeed if the appreciate, understand and work with a common objective. The sixth attribute is encouraging differences in opinions. While it is essential to agree on a common goal, but this should not be at the expense of suppressed alternative opinions and ideas. The divergent ideas can enhance the performance of the team and act as a competitive advantage. They question and threaten the status quo thus helping in stirring new ideas and imaginations, and resulting in creativity. The final attribute is trust since the absence of this attribute would more than likely result in team failure. Trust enables the team members to believe in the team goals and processes, and focus on solving problems. In fact, trust is an adjunct of effective communication since team members will freely air their views only if they trust their audiences(Ellis & Bach, 2015).

Model case

A 45 year old male patient was admitted to hospital for an elective surgery. On the morning of the surgery, the patient was visited by a phlebotomist who drew his blood for laboratory typing and cross matching. The hospital had a patient identification system that required the attending nurse to verify the identity of all patients being screened for blood transfusion. In practice, the nurse is required to initial the patient’s name and hospital identification number on the blood vial’s label. However, on this case a shift change was occurring and there was no available nurse to verify the patient’s identify. With more blood collections to conduct within the same floor, the phlebotomist carried the vial of blood to the nurses’ station where a random nurse labeled it before sending it to the laboratory for analysis. The blood sample was subjected to laboratory analysis after which the laboratory technician noticed discrepancies in values between the sample and previous samples. The technician raised the issue and investigations determined that the blood sample had been mislabeled and the patient scheduled for surgery would have been transfused with the wrong blood. Despite the near miss, the patient did not suffer any harm and a new blood sample was drawn before the surgery.

Borderline case

A 22 year old female patient was admitted to hospital for surgery. She had experienced extensive burns on her body and had been undergoing major reconstructive surgery at the hospital. This was the fifth surgery she was scheduled to undergo within the period of one year. A phlebotomist collected a sample of her blood during the preoperative period and presented it for blood typing and cross matching. However, during the data entry, the blood sample was mislabeled and the patient’s blood work results were replaced with those of a different patient. The erroneous information was included in the patient’s file and presented to the surgical team. The team prepared the surgical equipment and transfusion blood based on the blood work results. Although a different surgical team worked on the patient in the previous four surgeries, the same nurse was used on one previous occasion and she had an awareness of the patient and her blood type. Although she had only worked in the facility for three months, she had noticed the patient’s details as it was the first surgery she worked on in the facility. As the patient was placed on the surgery table, the nurse noticed that the blood type of the transfusion blood differed from what was used on the previous occasion. She raised her concerns with the rest of the surgical team who checked the patient’s medical records and determined that there was no issue. They stated that her inexperience had made her confused. However, the nurse insisted that this was the wrong blood type. The surgeon intervened by having new blood work done as a matter of urgency, after which it was discovered that the file information was erroneous. The surgery proceeded with the right blood type being used for transfusion.

Contrary case

A 41 year old male patient was admitted to hospital for a surgery to repair a femur fracture he sustained after a fall. Although the patient had an unremarkable medical history, the surgery was complicated by resuscitation following severe blood loss resultant of an acute vascular injury. The surgical team members were professionally competent and had worked as a team in numerous previous occasions. The attending surgeon ran late on the day of surgery, and the rest of the team members attempted to expedite anesthesia induction to reduce surgery delay and ensure that the procedure proceeded as scheduled to reduce staff overages. The patient was fast tracked through the preoperative setting and placed in surgery before the attending surgeon arrived. The operating room nurse performed the timeout after induction. Unbeknown to the operating room nurse, the patient was presented with the wrong identification label. The name, number, and blood type were incorrect. Tragically, the patient who should have survived after the surgery died postoperatively because he was transfused with incompatible blood. Despite the individual team members being competent medical personnel, their teamwork failed, and this played a critical and central role in the patient dying after surgery.

Implications for nursing practice

Teamwork has implications for nursing practice. Firstly, nursing care is become more specialized and complex, forcing nurses to quickly learn new skills as they attempt complicated services. Through adopting a team approach, the get to practice with more experienced medical personnel who guide them in providing competent care. Secondly, working in teams increases patients’ safety and reduces the opportunities for errors. Thirdly, it reduces burnout among nurses. With teamwork, the care responsibilities are not left to an individual, and instead have a whole team coming together to coordinate care. Fourthly, teamwork helps to breakdown power centralization and hierarchy in the medical facility so that nurses have more leverage. Fifthly, it improves satisfaction levels among patients and their families as it encourages solid communication with patients feeling at ease and accepting treatment. Finally, it improves satisfaction levels among nurses who get to show some of their work burdens (Gaberson, Oermann&Shellenbarger, 2015). In this respect, teamwork has positive implications for nursing practice.