Role Of Informal Leadership In Nursing

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Informal Leadership in Nursing Western Governors University RKOT 1 Task 2 Informal Leadership in Nursing Nurses are leaders even when not in a formal position such as in administration or nursing management. There are two areas where nurses lead; as a role model and a problem solver. A role model is able to demonstrate correct actions professionally to peers and other interdisciplinary co-workers. The correct actions reflected may not have been within the nurses comfort level, such as remaining calm while someone else may be addressing them irately. However, a professional nurse instead of reacting emotionally remains calm; exemplifying control in a charged situation. Co-workers and peers observing this will see this and after internalizing…show more content…
Problem solving is another area of informal leadership a professional nurse possesses. Upon encountering a problem, whether noted objectively or overheard through another’s complaint, the nurse employing leadership will not vent and complain to others, but take a different approach such as discuss with others with questions such as ‘have you noticed a problem when; entering this information in the computer, working with the IV pump, difficulty replacing universal precaution equipment, working with a Dr. Smith during procedures?’ etc. After garnering this information and determining if this is a static problem or ongoing, the nurse exemplifying the problem solving leadership will determine the next step whether further investigation is required, increasing an order of supplies, or approaching management and communicating with them. These actions will define and determine if the nurse is an effective leader. The assigned titles “manager”, “director”, “administrator” do not determine the leader, but the actions, attitude, and professionalism of the person determines the level of leadership. Throughout nursing school many skills and theories are taught, however leadership is not a strength in the programs and many new graduates appear weak in this area when they should always consider themselves leaders, exemplify leadership, and work to achieve and succeed in roles of…show more content…
The characteristics are transparency, fairness, active leadership, and psychological safety. Transparency implies its definition; primarily errors are reported and not hidden, especially about patient care. The transparency is not only related to reporting the patient errors but also reporting the reason and addressing cause behind errors, the corrective actions, and accepting accountability for said errors. The interdisciplinary team members will be encouraged that the ‘blame game’ is not the environment they are working in, but focusing at a ‘broken system’ and what can be done to safe-guard the patient and staff from the errors that were present in the system. Fairness is a way to level the playing field when system based errors effect the actions of a team member and again refers back to the ‘blame-game’ regarding system based errors. With fairness team members are aware that when a system based error occurs and they are involved, the organization will not shift blame to the member, but look at the system and determine where the break in the system occurred. Active leadership and psychological safety actually go hand-in-hand. Active leadership is leaders ‘actively’ developing an environment that staff will comfortable verbalizing their concerns about the system and psychological safety is informing staff that when the concerns are reported they will be received openly in an atmosphere

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