NUR670-Leadership in Health Care Organizations Practicum

Journaling provides a valuable tool for recording, reflecting on, and reviewing your learning. This approach provides an opportunity for you to "connect the dots" and observe the relationships between and among activities, interactions, and outcomes.

Unlike a personal journal of thoughts and feelings, this Leadership Journal is a record of your activities, assessments, and learning related to this academic experience.

Journal entries should include a record of the number of hours spent with your nurse leader each week.

Write a journal entry of 750-1,500 words on the subject of serving, including the following:

1. Provide observations and thoughts on the activities in Weeks 9-10.
2. Would your co-workers or those you "serve" consider you responsible for some aspect of their success? Describe a situation where you were able to assist another nurse with achieving a professional goal.
3. Reflect on at least two things you learned from the "Issue of Servant" video.

Through the past few years, staffing crisis had been observed and many of the professional researchers are of the opinion that advancement in the medical field had increased the life expectancy of the people. Therefore, due to the growth in the population of the aged individuals, there has been a huge pressure on the nursing professionals, as they had to handle a large number of patients (van Oostveen et al., 2015). Therefore, staffing crisis was felt as the rush of the patient inflow had increased. Moreover, as the number of nurse is quite low in comparison to the patients, the nurses suffered from burnouts as well as their emotional and physical health was compromised. Therefore, the nursing professionals left their jobs. Moreover bullying was also observed. Therefore, we undertook a bed huddle and tried to decide on the various ways by which admissions, discharges as well as transfers within the hospital inflow can be conducted in ways by which staffing can be accommodated properly. Poor staffing also compromised the quality of the care service and patients were dissatisfied. Therefore, as leaders, I learnt the different initiatives that I should take in such situations. This includes the allocation of proper resources to the human resource department so that they can effectively take in new staffs, develop training sessions for the already present staffs to handle the pressure effectively, introduce new incentive schemes for the nursing professionals as well as develop an organizational culture that ensure buy-free environment (Fox & Keisling et al., 2016). I developed good leadership skills that would help me in my future endeavors.

One of my junior colleagues was repeatedly making medication errors that were not being noticed as they were not resulting n threatening situations. One day, she was see to make terrible medication error she made when she provided a patient of 60 years old with hip replacement with both aspirin and ibuprofen without knowing about her allergy issues. She was seen to develop rash as well as blisters and her face had swollen up. Since the medications were provided in association as well as in high doses, they resulted in stomach bleeding of the patient resulting in suffering of the patient. After such incident, she got so scared and demotivated that she thought of leaving the profession. She did not want to harm anyone else and therefore took this decision. After the entire incident, I took upon the responsibility on myself to lead the nurse in a way by which she not only gains knowledge but also develop the confidence with which she used to work. Therefore, like a transformational leadership trait, I tried to motivate her in ways by which she can not only get encouraged but also develop an enthusiasm to get over the barriers and constitute serving for the humans. I motivated her in way by which she ensured to work beyond her potential; to achieve the organizational goals of providing safe and quality care to patients (Vaismorardi et al., 2016). Not only did I motivate her, but I also set myself as an example where I narrated my experiences in times of my enrolled nurses and how through determination and effort, I had achieved the potion of a leader. I guided her by referring her to training sessions where she would learn about proper medication administration technique. I also collected about 25 evidence-based papers that she can follow to develop more knowledge on the topic. I also guided her in every of her future medication administration so that she does not make mistakes. All these helped in developing her confidence and skills and she admitted that she had been grateful to get my assistance in her crisis period (Parry et al., 2015).

The video teaches us many important aspects of effective leadership. The first one aspect that I learnt is the meaning of leadership that is not to lead only but to influence others in ways by which they can ensure their best potential. The power of influencing can help in bring out the best benefit for the organization where the members would be encouraged and enthusiastic to dedicate themselves to meet the vision and mission of the organization (Washington et al., 2014). The second important thing that I learnt is the issue of power in leadership. By practicing the traits of servant leadership, I will develop myself in ways by which I will not rule others but rather be in a position by which I will try to recognize the power that I have which will influence others. The power to influence others in positive ways will help in bringing out benefits for others and power to influence in negative ways can result in harm to the organization (Berger, 2014). All these information would help me develop proper knowledge about how to lead people so that I can effectively manage others and lead them to success.

References:

Berger, T. A. (2014). Servant leadership 2.0: A call for strong theory. Sociological viewpoints, 30(1), 146.

Fox Jr, R. E., & Keisling, B. L. (2016). Build your program by building your team: Inclusively transforming services, staffing and spaces. Journal of Library Administration, 56(5), 526-539.

Parry, A. M., Barriball, K. L., & While, A. E. (2015). Factors contributing to Registered Nurse medication administration error: A narrative review. International journal of nursing studies, 52(1), 403-420.

Vaismoradi, M., Griffiths, P., Turunen, H., & Jordan, S. (2016). Transformational leadership in nursing and medication safety education: a discussion paper. Journal of nursing management, 24(7), 970-980.

van Oostveen, C. J., Mathijssen, E., & Vermeulen, H. (2015). Nurse staffing issues are just the tip of the iceberg: A qualitative study about nurses’ perceptions of nurse staffing. International journal of nursing studies, 52(8), 1300-1309.

Washington, R. R., Sutton, C. D., & Sauser Jr, W. I. (2014). How distinct is servant leadership theory? Empirical comparisons with competing theories. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 11(1), 11.