Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management

Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management

Health is an important aspect in a person’s life because it determines how well and excellently one can achieve their dreams. The best way to manage health is through the introduction of healthcare services and facilities. These services can only work by the help of well trained and learned healthcare physicians who should be controlled and managed by leaders to ensure that they successfully execute their duties. Therefore, this discussion will focus on nursing shortage and nurse turn-over and the roles of both the managers and the leaders towards this issue, an important topic because nurses are the key towards the success or failure of the healthcare institution.

In the healthcare organization, leaders and managers should implement viable methods to curb the shortage of nurses and nurse turn-over. Manager in any healthcare organization are meant to develop visionary objective centered on providing healthcare services to the patients. Leaders are supposed to ensure that all the departments in the organization are well equipped with both the physicians and the facilities. In any case they realize there is a shortage of physicians, they should immediately communicate to the manager in order to employ learned and qualified doctors and nurses. By doing so, managers and leaders work in a collaboration to ensure that any unfilled gap is filled and physicians have a low turn-over for the sake of patient’s health (Nagelkerk, 2005).

Nursing can be managed through fair compensation and recruitment campaigns. In 2002, Children’s National Medical Center emerged victorious in curbing the shortage of registered nurses (RN) through competitive compensation and recruitment campaigns. This aspect improved patient acuity as well as achieving workforce gains. Therefore, leaders should encourage managers to have a regular recruitment to have more nurses in cases of nursing shortages. Besides, nurses should yearn to become business managers and offer good compensation packages to ensure that all the physicians report to work adequately (Tally et al., 2013).

It is the responsibility of leaders and managers to apply their knowledge and skills in ensuring that there are low nursing shortages in the organization. On the same line, they should provide a conducive environment for all nurses especially the newly-employed nurses. This can be done through effective communication and attending to the needs of the nurses as early as they emerge. Therefore, leaders in a nursing organization should be role models, to give instructions to the subordinates and at the same time, have the ability to influence them in case of decision making and execution of activities. On the other hand, managers should give directions to the leaders and subordinates, and give commands to ensure that there is a flow of functionality in the organization. However, there is no clear distinction between the managers and the leaders, because both of them work towards maintaining the wellbeing of the patients.

Managers and leaders should realize the root cause of nursing turn-over and perceive why the physicians decide to work in their organization and at the same time meet the employee value proposition. They should have a regular monitoring of the nurses especially the newly employed to ensure that their job specification matches their qualifications. On this note, leaders should important factors that directly affect the nurses. For instance, leaders should consider their commuting distances, opportunities in career development as well as allowances. Managers should always desire to maintain employees’ retention and work flexibility. In addition, they should manage the trends of overworking, promotion and even appreciation. Most importantly, managers and leaders should decide on the best resolution techniques in lowering nurse shortage.

It is the responsibility of the managers and leaders to control the nursing shortage and turnover. Therefore, they should use their interpersonal, technical and conceptual skills to reduce nurse shortage and turnover. The most important skill to employ is the interpersonal skills. Through this skill, managers and leaders should utilize communication and listening skill to manage nursing turnover. They should effectively communicate with the nurses during the interview and before hiring them, to ensure that the nurses are comfortable with the new environment and comply with rules and regulation of the organization. Again, they should employ the listening skills to listen to the demands and the needs of the nurses, improve their working environment so as to reduce nursing shortage and turnover (Tomey, 2009).

Leaders and managers should apply shared governance in the organization destined for decision making. Generally, managers are supposed to make informed decision pertaining the organization. Nevertheless, it is equally important for the managers to include healthcare staff such as leaders and workers in the decision making process. This will be important because leaders and their subordinates are the ones affected by the decisions made by the managers. In any case the decisions appear stereotypical; it will negatively affect the workers and not the manager. Therefore, when included in the decision making, they ensure that they only agree to the positive issues and not the negative ones. In addition, they are motivated to feel part of the organization and work hard every day to meet their desired goals, and this reduces nursing shortage and turnover (Graham-Dickerson et al., 2013). 

Leaders and managers are expected to provide the best time flame for working. Healthcare leaders monitor the allocation of duties among the healthcare workers. They should ensure that each nurse works within the recommended working hours to avoid fatigue. Fatigue causes confusion and restlessness and this might make the nurses to do their jobs inappropriately which poses a risk to the patients. Therefore, leaders should communicate to the manager to employ more workers who can efficiently work within the required time period. On this note, managers should be willing to release their payment in time to ensure that nurses are in their workplace at all times (O’Brien-Pallas et al., 2006).

In conclusion, the success of any healthcare organization is dependent on the relationship between workers, leaders and managers. Workers are closer to their leaders than they are with their managers. In addition, leaders are closer to their managers than workers to their manager. Therefore, leaders are the best people in the healthcare organization to examine the conditions of the workers and after that decide on the best implementation methods to keep them sorted. There should be an effective communication channel between them and similarly, leaders should reach their managers efficiently. In light of this, leaders should be open enough and precise to their managers to air their views and what can be done to meet the objective of the organization. Since managers are the bosses, they should be fair to provide what the organization needs, be it financial support, advice, partnership or even new environment. Most importantly, the organization is not complete without the workers, leaders and managers, and therefore, they should work together for the wellbeing of their patients and this can reduce nursing shortage and turnover.               

References

Graham-Dickerson, P., Houser, J., Thomas, E., Casper, C., ErkenBrack, L., Wenzel, M., & Siegrist, M. (2013). The value of staff nurse involvement in decision making. Journal of Nursing Administration, 43(5), 286-292.

Nagelkerk, J. (2005). Leadership and nursing care management. Elsevier Health Sciences.

O’Brien-Pallas, L., Griffin, P., Shamian, J., Buchan, J., Duffield, C., Hughes, F., … & Stone, P. W. (2006). The impact of nurse turnover on patient, nurse, and system outcomes: a pilot study and focus for a multicenter international study. Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, 7(3), 169-179.

Talley, L. B., Thorgrimson, D. H., & Robinson, N. C. (2013). Financial literacy as an essential element in nursing management practice. Nursing Economics, 31(2), 77.

Tomey, A. M. (2009). Nursing management and leadership. Elsevier, Missouri.