Nursing Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Nursing Leadership - Essay Example As the patient fell from the bed and broke his arm, the nurse and hospital were liable for damages. This paper aims to identify nursing policies that were not followed so as to prevent such a scenario from occurring. Firstly, nursing leadership and managerial qualities in regards to the present situation shall be outlined. Secondly, issues of nursing accountability shall be detailed. Next, the concept of team-work as pertains to the scenario shall be highlighted. Following, the topics of clinical governance, as well as teaching and facilitating of nurses in general, shall be outlined as relevant to the present scenario. Some of the areas that leadership and management incorporate are finances, business focus, information management, and marketing (Baker, 2000a; Kelly-Hayes, 2003). When a patient falls from a bed because procedures have not been followed, it is clear that nursing leadership and management training is lacking. In the current scenario, additional costs were created within the hospital to care for the patient, in regards to the broken limb, as well as consultation with attorney's to establish their legal obligations, and in administration costs to report the incident, and to process ongoing documentation relevant to the complaint made by the family. From the point of view of nursing being a business, the scenario i... The information management that was lacking was that the nurse did not have available protocols to compare her patient care to. In regards to marketing, the hospital as well as the nurse has provisioned the patient and family with an image of being incompetent and neglectful in their care for the patient.Recent studies point to a distinct lack of leadership qualities amongst nurses in general, and attribute this to a lack of training in the area (Laukkanen, 2005). Unfortunately, this is a waste of resources as nurses are in key position to influence hospital care policies, as well as state and national legislation (Sullivan, 2001). It is contended that student nurses need to be encouraged to develop their leadership and managerial skills, as well as their clinical skills (Baker, 200b). For example, a more salient awareness of cost-containment issues could have motivated the hospital to have set protocols for the bed-care of elderly patients (Antrobus, 1999). Additionally, the use of job re-design amongst the nursing staff could have provided the hospital with a critical evaluation of the sequential tasks of each job a nurse undertakes, and provided solutions for combining tasks to improve patient care (e.g., saying goodnight/see you later to a patient also includes the action of the hands checking the bed-rail is up) (Sullivan, 2001).Quality management important to nursing as it allows for an evaluation of the outcomes of practices. In turn, this style of management provides for a preventative approach to nursing that identifies potential problems quickly, and facilitates research into viable alternative solutions (Belcher, 2000; Hendel & Steinmann, 2002). As such,