Tguevara.Module6-N496.docx - Nursing Hero (2024)

1 People and the Process of Change Tiffany Guevara Aspen University Nursing Leadership and Management N496 Prof Hamilton MSN, RN January 17th, 2022

2 People and the Process of Change The role that nursing practitioners play in healthcare organizations cannot be discounted based on their contribution to the healthcare sector (Goldsberry, 2018). With the varying roles that nursing practitioners are expected to play in healthcare organizations, it is required that these nurses work under leadership to influence the direction that these nursing practitioners are expected to take. With the presence of nursing leaders in organizations, it is important that these leaders engage other nursing leaders to better understand their professional roles. To better understand the roles that nursing leaders, play in healthcare organizations, there is the need to overshadow a nurse leader who holds a leadership position and also conduct an interview with this nursing leader to better understand their professional role and how their role influence the performance of healthcare organizations. In order to achieve this objective in this paper, Cynthia Ocasio, the unit manager at an ambulatory surgical center, was overshadowed and interviewed to better understand the role of a nursing leader. Leadership Skills and Qualities According to Cummings et al. (2021), leadership continues to remain an important aspect towards the success or failure of healthcare organizations. This is because the leaders can influence the behavior of their followers or the employees in an organization towards achieving a particular goal (ibid). It is for this reason that Murray et al. (2018) considers the leadership approach that is adopted by the leader to be very crucial towards influencing the behavior of their followers or organizational members. By this, Holsinger and Carlton (2018) further established some qualities and skills of a leader that contributes towards achieving organizational goals and objectives. Although Holsinger and Carlton (2018) clarified that these qualities and skills are not

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3 exhaustive, they provide a core understanding of the necessary skills and qualities those who hold leadership positions must possess. The skills as identified included technical skills, interpersonal or human skills, and conceptual skills (ibid). The qualities as identified also included intelligence, self-confidence and determination, and personal integrity (ibid). For the period that Cynthia Ocasio, the unit manager at an ambulatory surgical center, was shadowed, it was discovered that there are certain leadership qualities and skills that makes a leader very effective and, in some cases, ineffective. It was discovered that the emotional intelligence of a leader plays a crucial aspect towards managing relationship with other people as well as helping the nursing leader to cope with stressors, especially in the day-to-day activities of the nursing leader. In the view of Lee (2019), emotional intelligence refers to the ability of an individual to understand and manage his or her emotions as well as other people. It is for this reason that considering the emotional intelligence of a leader, Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist, popularized five key elements of emotional intelligence including self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills (Farmer et al., 2020). It was discovered that these elements are very crucial towards becoming an effective leader in the nursing practice. It was again discovered that critical thinking is a very crucial aspect when it comes to nursing leadership. In the view of Bryant et al. (2020), critical thinking involves the process of solving the problems of patients and making complex decisions. By this, it was observed that nursing leaders are involved in the making of complex decisions in healthcare and these decisions may pertain to patients, interprofessional teams as well as other healthcare professionals. This therefore requires that as part of the leadership qualities of nursing leaders, they are expected to think critically in carrying out the day activities in healthcare organizations.