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Question: Analysis relationship between leadership styles and patient safety
Patient safety events and efficacy in any healthcare setting are derived from a blend of practical techniques utilizing diagnostic results provided by cutting-edge technology (Weaver et al., 2013). The major safety events in the treatment of diseases include manageable adverse drug events. The adverse events are expected to happen in health care system however they should be controlled to the great extent in order to minimize the risk on patient health. With the capacity to assess a patient quickly, modern day healthcare steers in increasing the life span; more efforts have to be put for elderly patients and to have a better quality of treatment. Despite all of the advances in healthcare over the decades, one constant remains, leadership. The nurses can utilize the empirical approaches based on research findings, perceptions of performance data and clinical involvement for the benefit of improvements in organization (Merrill, 2015). The objective of the papers is to describe the relationship between leadership in nursing and patient safety, responsiveness, and recruiting of new professionals followed by conclusions.
According to ‘Institute of Medicine’, the term patient safety refers to ‘the prevention of danger/harm to the heath patients’ by providing an attention towards the medication in terms of timely administration and adequate doses. The medication errors are expected to occur to influence the safety of patients and thus the errors should be minimized in order to promote health during hospitalization (Verschueren et al., 2013). The leadership is the capacity of nurses to influence and monitor the performance of subordinates by providing quality inputs, motivating and instructing them for effective treatment in healthcare organization. There are diverse styles of leadership that supervisors of nurse steer the staff nurses in hospital (Abu Al Rub & Alghamdi, 2012). The essential aspect of leadership is to ensure quality in health settings, efficacy of drugs for the intended use and their pharmacological action. The nurse’s impression of their manager’s administration styles may affect attendant's nature of consideration and their capacity to deal with patients' wellbeing needs fittingly. The relationship amongst initiative and patient wellbeing can be evaluated taking into account the degree of patient fulfilment, outcomes with administration of medication, intensity of untoward effects, risk of events and use of resources for the disease management. According to the reports (Wong et al., 2013), the primary criteria were based on the satisfaction of patient or caregivers. The focus of most reports was based on the measurement of recovery, rate of mortality and mistakes happen during medication. However, the sources that describe relationship is based on four models including transformation leadership style, transactional leadership style, laissez-faire leadership style and perception of effectiveness (Ahmad et al., 2014).
Transformation leadership style: The adaptive and flexible leadership model, 'transformational model’ directs in sharing the responsibilities to show a novel method for the management of diseases. The model facilitates retaining of talented work force i.e., the nurses and patients. The nursing leader allots the work for nurses to engage fully and to satisfy the patients. Adequate work can be provided to the nursing staff i.e., optimum work in catering the patients so that the nurses can finish the assigned works in time without difficulty. The model encourages the patients and caregivers for newer thoughts and moral values. No significant medication errors so low or no adverse events are expected. The model stimulates the followers to increase the trust and confidence o the medication by inspiration, and intellectual motivation (Doody & Doody, 2012). It seems the model most suits for the patients and caregivers with adequate education background and marginal outcome could be anticipated from the people with poor socioeconomic background.
Transactional leadership style: The model preserves the association's current society, arrangements, and techniques. The salient features of model includes, identification of faults in the responsibilities of followers especially nurses. It facilitates in exchanging the knowledge and responsibilities between leader and follower. The model also offers rewards for the fellow staff with timely completion of activities i.e., for exceptional contributors in the profession (Negussie & Demissie, 2013). As the knowledge is translating from leaders to subordinates, a significant magnitude of knowledge in terms of practical aspects is anticipated to deliver. The model looks to be not covering the safety aspects of patients hence the relationship between safety and nursing leadership is suboptimal. The nursing leaders are not directly involving in assessing the safety of patients. However it indirectly reflect the relationship between the targets by implementing the timely support in medication.
Laissez-faire leadership style: The model can work adequately when driving a staff of inspired, exceptionally gifted, self-coordinated representatives who have years of experience. It also helps significantly if the Laissez-Faire pioneer gives criticism as required. The model is not useful if the staff members are inefficient and poor abilities to grasp the skills upon motivation (Papathanasiou et al., 2014), nurses with certain problems or dissatisfaction towards management and inadequate work experience. Good results and thus relation can be anticipated with a good team and with patient safety. The nursing leaders are not in direct contact with the patients; instead, they should collect the feedback from patients on periodic basis. If the nursing leaders fail to obtain the feedback from patients, the model cannot be expected to work and improve the relationship between the patient’s safety and nursing leaders. To facilitate the model to be implemented, the management should conduct periodic trainings on nursing leaders and monitor their performance on periodic basis. The management should also identify the nurses with poor skills, solve the problems and encourage the nurses based on their performance.
The relationship between the nursing leadership models and patient safety was discussed. It appears that nursing models show strong influence for patient safety. The increasing numbers of checkpoints in the loop of nurse and patient can reduce the safety. A comprehensive understating of patient history and medication is expected to decrease the risk of adverse events. Among the models, the transformational leadership model appears to provide better safety compared to other models as the model offers a direct relationship between nurse and patients. Other models offer an indirect relationship between nurse and patient safety. Nurse pioneers assume a testing part in the work environment and add to the adequacy of a health care organisation. The present paper gives clear data about the commitment of nursing administration styles in clinical settings. The models so far reported dealt for general applications. However, it was not clear from the models about nurses who are involving in patients with mental disorders. The patients with mental disorders show typical behaviour. Infact, the medication is associated severe adverse events and hence patient safety. Therefore, to handle such issues for antipsychotic drugs and anticancer drugs, more emphasis should be given for nursing leaders and patients in this area.
Abu Al Rub, R.F & Alghamdi, M.G (2012). The impact of leadership styles on nurses' satisfaction and intention to stay among Saudi nurses. J Nurs Manag. 20(5), 668-78
Ahmad, E.A., Ayman, M.H., Dennis, R.S., Ahmed, A and Sultan, A (2014) Nurses’ perception of managers’ leadership styles and its associated outcomes American Journal of Nursing Research, 2 (4), 57-62
Doody, O & Doody, C.M (2012) Transformational leadership in nursing practice. Br J Nurs. 21(20), 1212-4, 1217-8.
Merrill, K.C (2015) Leadership style and patient safety: implications for nurse managers. J Nurs Adm. 45(6), 319-24.
Negussie, N., & Demissie, A. (2013). Relationship between leadership styles of nurse nanagers and nurses’ job satisfaction in Jimma university specialized Hospital. Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences, 23(1), 49–58.
Papathanasiou, I. V., Fradelos, E. C., Kleisiaris, C. F., Tsaras, K., Kalota, M. A., & Kourkouta, L. (2014). Motivation, leadership, empowerment and confidence: Their relation with nurses’ burnout. Materia Socio-Medica, 26(6), 405–410.
Verschueren, M., Kips, J & Euwema, M (2013). A review on leadership of head nurses and patient safety and quality of care. Adv Health Care Manag. 14, 3-34.
Weaver, S.J., Dy, S., Lubomski, LH & Renee, W. (2013). Promoting a culture of safety. In: Making health care safer II: An updated critical analysis of the evidence for patient safety practices. Rockville (MD): Agency for healthcare research and quality (US). (Evidence Reports/Technology Assessments, No. 211.) Chapter 33. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK133394/
Wong, C.A., Cummings, G.G & Ducharme, L (2013) The relationship between nursing leadership and patient outcomes: a systematic review update. J Nurs Manag. 21(5), 709-24.