Leaders are usually in charge of people and they rule or guide while the people follow them. Leadership in nursing is essential as it ensures the proper delivery of healthcare needs to patients and their families. Learning about nursing leadership has boosted many students’ knowledge of leadership and the importance of leaders in the medical field. The students can identify the leadership styles through which they develop and manage other people intelligently. This reflection focuses on professional leadership strengths, lessons related to nursing that students have learned and how to utilize the lessons, and specific areas through which the students can fulfill leadership responsibilities.
Leadership plays an essential role in ensuring the delivery of services to patients with cardiovascular complications. These delicate patients require premium care, especially in the intensive care unit. Patients in the cardiovascular intensive care unit (CICU) are admitted for serious, acute, and unstable cardiac conditions that require real-time monitoring and specialized cardiovascular therapy (Salamon, 2022). Therefore, leaders in this unit need to be agile to coordinate all activities smoothly. Departmental heads in CICU ensure proper assignment of roles such as administration of drugs and monitoring temperature to the qualified staff, which guarantees the smooth recovery of patients.
The learning process of a nurse involves many activities, among them an assessment, diagnosis planning, implementation, and evaluation. Nursing instructors should ensure these activities are done practically for the students to understand them well. To overcome patients’ barriers, healthcare professionals should adapt teaching by using a more hands-on and creative mode (Shaner, 2021). Nurse leaders have, therefore, been taught and perfected the art of handling different patients as they go through the implementation phase of learning. Evaluating the results helps the students understand where they stand as nurse leaders and where they need to enhance their knowledge of leadership medical field.
Throughout nursing practice, students are taught the essential qualities of nurse leaders applicable in the future. Major attributes of nurse leaders demand that they serve as role models to healthcare and team members while coordinating and effectively communicating the goals and expectations of each team player (Morganelli, 2021). Nurse leaders should advocate for patients while exercising emotional intelligence, which helps communicate with patients and colleagues effectively. Having understood and perfected emotional intelligence, the students can create a network of activities in which the flow is seamless because each team member understands their role and how to relate to each other to achieve the team’s overall goals.
Among the lessons learned in nursing leadership is the importance of a good relationship with patients and core workers. Nurses are the cornerstone of healthcare, and nurse leadership is critical for strengthening the integration of safe, effective, and quality healthcare (Morganelli, 2021). Situations demanding critical thinking and fast decision-making to save the patient’s life occur at workplaces. Two families brought their patients during practice in one of the major hospitals. One showed several symptoms, such as chest tightness, shortness of breath, and pain in the jaws and the neck. The other patient had a drooped face inability to move arms due to numbness and slurred speech.
The two patients were experiencing symptoms of cardiovascular disease, but they were of two different types. The first was experiencing symptoms of coronary heart disease (CHD), while the second was experiencing the symptoms of a stroke. Lessons learned so far outlined that CHD was more likely to cause sudden death than a stroke. Such an emergency requires the nurse leader to project calmness and confidence while showing authority for the two patients to be attended to flawlessly Creation of a robust and empowered network of teams that can operate outside the hierarchy of an organization is critical when responding to emergencies (Alexander et al., 2020) The nurse leader exhibited decisiveness and assigned each patient to a team of other nurses that had been created earlier.
During this occurrence, the nurse leader learned to be decisive and communicate strongly for smooth activities. Critical situations require excellent communication skills and coordination between team members to succeed. The leader exercised calmness and fast decision-making, which helped save the lives of the two patients. Participative decision-making affects morals, knowledge, and attitude that contribute to leadership performance (Torlak et al., 2021). Asking their colleagues how they thought the situation would be handled best empowered them and increased their faith in the leader, and reaching a mutual decision helped them work wholeheartedly. A good relationship with team members and the knowledge of handling critical situations helped the student improve their leadership skills and passion for nursing.
These leadership attributes learned throughout the course are complemented by ensuring quality improvement (QI). QI refers to improvement in patient outcomes, system performance, and professional development resulting from a combined multidisciplinary approach to delivering change (Backhouse & Ogunlayi, 2020). The multidisciplinary approach in nursing integrates different disciplines, such as CHD, high blood pressure, strokes, and cardiac arrests. All these disciplines are important when dealing with patients with cardiovascular diseases. The leadership skills learned, such as decision-making, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and teamwork, can be utilized in healthcare. They help healthcare practitioners and nurses build confidence in their patients and colleagues and hence manage and direct operations in intensive care units (ICU) without difficulty.
Leadership requires commitment and dedication from leaders to gain their followers’ confidence. Leaders inspire confidence and support among people who aspire to achieve organizational goals (Shah,2018). Some personal goals that help fulfill leadership roles are proactiveness and expanding someone’s professional network. Attending medical events and seminars to gain empowerment in nursing leadership helps practitioners grow in the field. The student will, therefore, signup for virtual classes on communication and psychology to help boost their knowledge in nursing. These skills will help the student scale up fast in the professional field and enhance their confidence in their leadership skills.
The student aims to become an expert in the medical field, which will provide many opportunities for employment Learners can consider mentorship from industry professionals to learn about what industry leaders do daily (Birt, 2021). Mentorship helps learners learn faster by tapping into the knowledge of those more experienced than themselves. Approaching managers and heads of medical field departments to share their knowledge will help the students ease into their roles as future leaders. The students should encourage their coursemates to form teams within which they brainstorm and share ideas that are helpful in the nursing field.
This reflection focused on professional leadership strengths, lessons related to nursing that students learned and how to utilize them, and specific areas through which the students could fulfill leadership responsibilities. Lessons learned were put to practice, and critical situations helped the students exercise their leadership skills. Leadership skills were well explained, and the students understood how they would polish their skills further as they prepared to be leaders in the future. Nursing practice requires professionalism and excellent leadership skills, which can be established when institutions apply a multidisciplinary approach to teaching.
References
Alexander, A., Smet, A. D., Kleinman, S., & Mugayar-Baldocchi, M. (2022). To weather a crisis, build a network of teams. McKinsey & Company. Web.
Backhouse, A., & Ogunlayi, F. (2020). Quality improvement into practice. BMJ, 368, m865. Web.
Birt, J. (2021). Professional goals to improve your career (with 24 examples). Indeed. Web.
Morganelli, D. M. (2021). What is nurse leadership? Southern New Hampshire University. Web.
Salamon, M. (2022). What is a cardiac care unit? Verywell Health. Web.
Shah, B. (2018). Effective leadership in organization. European Journal of Business Management and Research, 3(3), 1–5. Web.
Shaner, D. J. (2021). Teaching patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy! 19(1), 14–16. Web.
Torlak, N. G., Demir, A., & Budur, T. (2021). Decision-making, leadership and performance links in private education institutes. Rajagiri Management Journal, 16(1), 63–85. Web.