Health Care Leadership

This reflective essay is based on my strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (SWOT) analysis (Appendix 1) in order to examine my leadership skills. Leadership is one of the essential component in nursing since all nurses are expected to demonstrate effective leadership skills to ensure patient’s well-being is protected and improve their experiences while receiving the care (Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2015). Firstly, leadership will be defined within the context of the NHS and particularly nursing. Furthermore, some of the current health issues and challenges faced by health care practice that are related to poor leadership will be discussed. The essay will be continued by exploring various relevant leadership theories in relation to nursing practice and working within the Multi-Disciplinary Teams (MDTs). Lastly, as mentioned earlier, I will also be reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses from practice, then develop a SMART (Specific, measureable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) action plan to improve my leadership skills which will be followed by a brief conclusion.

Medication errors are preventable and cause great harm to the patients and their families. Every year in Australian hospitals, medication errors occur as nurses do not follow the 9 rights of medication administration. The 9 rights are right patient, drug, route, time, documentation, response, action and form (Fossum et al., 2016). Medication errors can be caused by

Leadership has been defined in a number of ways, but the concept is still indefinable (Barr and Dowding 2016). Buchanan and Huczynski (2010, p. 596) define leadership as “a process of influencing the activities of an organised group in its efforts towards goal-setting and goal achievement”. In clinical practice, leadership translates to an ability to direct other to achieve evidence-based practice that supports enhanced patient outcomes (Kelly-Hiedenthal 2004). Like any other industries and organisations, an effective leadership skill is vital in the healthcare sector to improve the standards of the care and to achieve organisational goals (Bach and Ellis 2015). Sullivan and Decker (2004) stated that nurses often step up to the

As defined by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA, 2015), a medication error is “any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or harm to a patient.” In order to prevent harm by medications, nurses and nursing students alike are required to adhere to the “seven patient rights,” which help eliminate any possible errors in the medication administration process. These seven rights include: right patient, right drug, right dose, right route, right time, right action and right documentation. However, many medication errors continue to occur because one or more of these rights is either violated, or omitted altogether. Research done by Polifroni, et al. (2003), shows that the most common errors in medication administration are those involving the time of administration and the dosage amount. These errors are often a direct result of the nurse’s increasingly chaotic practicing environment. Increasing nursing shortages create a larger patient load for each nurse, making is easier for the nurse to get distracted and inadvertently miss the dose,

The key to the success of a healthcare organization is defined by the many qualities and attributes its leaders possess when overseeing patient care. Such care, whether executed at the micro, meso, or macro level, can be beneficial to an organization, or results in the failure when change is inappropriately addressed. A strong leader is one who can manage change, and direct care throughout all the numerous levels of an organization by utilizing values that are a reflection of the bureaucratic thoughts and principles, or the complex adaptive system.

Consider the changes you have already noticed within your practice setting as well as those anticipated due to health care reform.

A model of medication errors was developed on error-producing conditions like work environment, team factors, personal factors, medication-related support services and patient-specific factors, Chang and Mark (2009). Work environment factors looked at nursing and how they simultaneously manage multiple patients. Nurses shift their attention from patient to patient and often carry out several tasks at a time. Having more nurses staffed has been associated with a decrease in medication errors (McGillis Hall et al 2004). Team factors expressed that medication administration is a multistep process with many involved disciplines. Therefore, there needs to be a well-established communication across disciplines. Most important is the communication between nurses and providers. We need to also look at a nurses’ ability to recognize a potentially dangerous event early on. Expert nurses are expected to make fewer errors and recognize a change in a patients’ condition at its earliest. (Minick and Harvey

An analysis of given workloads in the event of medication errors in nursing was conducted by an exploratory-descriptive study with a quantitative approach. People who were part of the study had experienced some medication error in their work unit, with dose errors being the most frequent and the number of staff giving to the event of medication errors. Constructing successful ways to reach goals necessary to make something as small as possible in the event of medication errors and patient safety.

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." Ronald Reagan, (Haden, 2014). This Assignment will reflect the personal success of two different leaders in the healthcare sector. From different backgrounds and different beginning but with similar motivation to leave an remarkable impression on humanity.

The sampling was of 38 nurses and a convenience sample was used. Contributing factors to medication errors included nurses tired and exhausted, physician’s writing illegible, and nurses distracted/ interrupted. Distraction may lead to not completing the “five rights” of medication administration. Poor communication was also perceived as a reason for error. Preventative measures were listed as following the five rights and a computerized system for prescribing and documenting

A wonderful contribution. This is a perfect illustration of a great leadership in the healthcare settings. It is wise to incorporate effective and authentic leadership in the same aptitude. One of the issues of healthcare settings today is the shortage of nurses which compiles the work load of the staff members and such issue generates poor leadership in my work environment. Effective and authentic leadership play an important role to achieve patient satisfactions and encourages staff members’ knowledge and skills. When staff members are given extra workload, the chances of patient dissatisfaction increases and when they workers lack support from the management, it increases medication errors, poor performance, and decrease staff

The healthcare industry is experiencing unprecedented change generated by multiple external forces including “Obamacare,” electronic medical records, an aging population, and mergers and acquisitions (Goretsky, 2012). These unprecedented changes along with the needs of the patients, staff and operations place significant demands on healthcare leaders. In most cases, physician leaders receive little to no leadership training in medical school resulting in a need for organizations to provide leadership learning to address current and future strategic and operational issues. Traditional leadership development programs may be inadequate for the workforce of the future. Organizations need to identify potential leaders earlier and accelerate them

As a consequence, it is also the most common failures that a Leader working in health care services should face and improve in favour of offer an excellent service for the patients and community. However, deal with these events is no easy and require wide knowledge related to procedures, policies and regulations in order to organize the implementation of leadership theories without affecting the rules already established or interfere with the operation of the health service.

In every health care organisation, strong leadership and management skills play a pivotal role in the provision of quality patient care. Among health care professionals, a strong leadership style is one that motivates the team to practice ‘direct involvement in clinical care while constantly influencing others to improve the care they provide’ (Cook, 1999). This is echoed by Porter-O’Grady (2003) who stated, ‘Primarily nurses may use leadership ‘styles’ to effectively identify and achieve goals, motivate staff and support to help provide the best evidence based practice to achieve a specific and achievable goal’. With a focus on two specific leadership styles, namely transactional and transformational, nursing professionals can positively influence the quality of patient care. These two styles both stem from power and influence, the core leadership theory that suggests personal power is vital in leadership and a successful leader uses both expert and referent sources of power (Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006). Both these styles are significantly different in approach and execution. They both also present different strengths and weaknesses so it is important for graduating nurses to understand how to use both styles collaboratively and to their advantage as they are not mutually exclusive, and some combination of both may enhance effective leadership (Mahoney, 2001). A manager is expected to carry out specific duties and has definite responsibilities. Good nursing managers are

Millions of people are affected by adverse drug events every year. Medication errors are one of the most common and alarming types of errors that nurses can make, especially when neglecting to follow the five rights of medication administration. This paper evaluated several articles that cite causes and strategies to prevent medication errors. By studying processes that reveal potential areas in healthcare (nursing in particular) that allow for these medication errors, a myriad of interwoven solutions may be implemented to improve the safety of patients receiving medications. Rigorous following of the five rights of medication administration, barcoding of medications, combined with computer-order-entry entails teamwork and collaboration of the multi-disciplinary team that provides the best patient outcomes as it relates to medication administration.