Leadership Essay Sample Online: Your Guide to Success

Essay Topic “Not all leadership is about changing or challenging people’s vision of the future” (Stanley, 2011, p. 57). Stanley, D. (2011). Clinical leadership: Innovation into action. Palgrave Macmillan: South Yarra. With reference to leadership, including clinical leadership, critically analyse and discuss the statement quoted above. Your discussion should draw upon different theories of leadership and management to examine this statement and support your argument. To prepare and write Assessment 1 Part B: Essay, you should ensure that your essay is:

• Well researched – you must refer to AT LEAST: five (5) relevant and current sources to support your ideas including articles from peer reviewed journals identified from relevant electronic databases such as CINAHL and MEDLINE, recommended text books and relevant texts from library shelves.
• Logically structured – you should organise your response following the conventional essay format that comprises an introduction, a body and a conclusion.

Introduction Leadership and management are very crucial to the efficient delivery of healthcare services hence resulting to positive patient outcome. Despite the fact that leadership and management have some similar aspects, they may be different in terms of outlook, skills and the general behavior. Good managers should work toward being good leaders while on the other other hand good leaders should acquire good management skills. Efficient leadership in healthcare system requires the leader to be visionary on what should be achieved. The leader then communicates the vision to other and come up with strategies on how the vision can be achieved. However, it should be noted that not all leadership is concerned with changing or challenging people’s future vision. This essay will focus on different leadership theories and they can be applied to promote patient safety in medicals sector. Leadership and management are crucial determinants of the patient safety in any healthcare system. Study done by Aiken, (2011) showed that the ability to successfully reduce adverse events and at the same time ensuring high quality care provision depend on the leadership of the organization. Leadership should not only be viewed as the top rank of the organization but it should be noted that the frontline health workers with their mediate supervisors also play big role in the efficient running of the institution (Francis, 2013). The workers at bottom of the ranking can effectively notice the shortcomings of the organization and address then to the relevant authorities. Effective leadership strategies promote patient safety by reduction of medical errors, provision of coordinated care that involve combined effort of the patient ,the family and the health care provider (Australian Institue of Health and Welfaren (AIHW), 2014). The leadership style used should be able to effectively promote patient safety. Effective patient safety refers to the the protection of the patient from harm. It emphasizes on the establishment of healthcare system that promotes errors prevention and allows learning from the previous mistakes (Aiken, 2011). The leadership style should allow the building on safety cultures that involves both healthcare professionals and organization. Efficient leadership styles are very critical for achievement of evidence based clinical practice across different disciplines. Leadership styles such as transformational democratic, authoritative and transactional are applied at different levels in the healthcare sector. Transformational leadership requires the leader to recognize the team member’s ability and potential according to their hierarchy of needs (Chan, 2013). The leader also strives to satisfy the needs that are great importance such as self-esteem. The style ensures that the full potential of the employees is achieved by fully engaging them. Study done by Gantz, (2012) transformational leaders encourage their followers to go beyond their job description and act as mentor to others. In return, the empowered followers become more loyal to the organization, become motivated and hence increased job satisfaction. According to study done by Davis (2014) effective transformational leadership can result to reduced sickness levels hence promoting a positive working environment. All this is attributed to the fact that the leader uses skills that can be used to successfully develop a positive relationship with the followers (Gantz, 2012). A positive relationship with the followers ensures high standards of patient safety because the employees are proud of their jobs. Transactional leadership involves the use of both rewards and punishment to promote the compliance of the team members. The style focuses on the role of supervision, organization and group performance to ensure the organization vision is achieved (Hinno, 2012). The leader pays more attention on the followers work to identify any faults and deviations that may have been committed. Traditional leadership is very effective in the case of crisis like the emergency cases. It may also be used when the required duty needs to achieved in a given specific direction. Authoritarian leadership on the other hand gives the leder the mandate to make all the decisions without involving the team members (Aiken, 2011). The rules are enforced through negative reinforcements and punishments and mistakes are not tolerated at all level. Unlike the case of transformational leadership, the blame is placed in the individual and not the entire system (Chan, 2013). Generally, there are different leadership styles that can effectively be used in the healthcare sector. Proper leadership should ensure loyalty and job satisfaction by the staff hence promoting general patient safety. Selection of the leadership style to be used high depends on the underlying medical condition to be addressed. The style may differ from one clinical situation to another. Healthcare organization require to improve their entire patient safety still can use transformational leadership style. Study done by Hairr, (2014) proved that transformational leadership is faced on the balancing the tension between production and efficiency by creating creating trust between the management and the employees. The increase loyalty then promotes effective communication and collaborative relations. Collaboration helps in reduction of the occurrence of medical error because the staff believed that it is their join responsibility to ensure patient safety at all times (Health Workforce Australia (HWA), 2015). The styles also ensures that their job hence making the employees to be proud of their work and work to the bets perfection. Authoritative leadership style can effectively be used in the case of emergency especially in the ICU. This is because under these circumstances there is no time from seeking opinions (Hairr, 2014). The intervention must be administered with the highest level of urgency. In this case negative patient output is primarily due to the leading nurse and not the. Translocation leadership may also be applied in the case of ICU. It recognizes the team members who have performed well and punishes those that have not met their targets (Hinno, 2012). This makes the team members to be more careful when administering their duties since they are entitles to the outcome. This promotes patients safety through reduction of the possible medical errors that might have been committed due to carelessness. Although most health care system aspires to be effective in service delivery and ensure that patient safety is maintained at all times all these depend on presence of competent leadership. Hutchinson, (2013) showed that building of capacity building measures always fail if there is no strong organizational leadership. Organizational success the top requires leaders who can build on creation of learning environment and retaining of its talent (Aiken, 2011). This move ensures that the heath care facility to become an organization that has culture of character and integrity. This then implies that the organization must use leadership styles that permit open environment that allow them to freely air their views, respect with leaders that encourage transparency and honesty (Hairr, 2014). Bad leadership strategies usually spoil the organization and and the leaders are manipulative and very much deceiving. Research done by Keenan (2014), show that nursing leaders can effectively change the working environment and promote patient safety. This is because the nurses are in the best position to affect the day-to-day operations. Some of the leadership styles such as transformational leadership may positively contribute to the safety environment (Hinno, 2012). On the contrary, other leadership styles such as laissez-faire may not be effective because it promotes the blame culture and does not promote unit socialization. Leaders in the health care organization must therefore focus on the development of positive leadership styles such as transformational and diminish the negative ones. In the health care system nurse leader are the most effective in maintaining high level of patient safety. This is due to their unique role in enhancing and promoting patient safety by leading and managing a team that is actively involved in the day-to-day activities of the clinic (Keenan, 2014). These groups of staff also have the highest level of contact and interact differently with the patients. The activities that involve direct interaction with the patient include care coordination, control of infections, and management of medication. They are also engaged in other general activities such as psychosocial support together with the general nursing care. It is evident that nurses have pivot point in the best quality care and ensuring that better patient outcomes are achieved (Hutchinson, 2013). Despite the critical role played by the nurses to ensure patient safety and positive outcome, it should be noted that they could not achieve this in isolation. The ability of the nursing leadership to ensure best practice care depend on the working environment and how they interact with other health care practitioners, level of support together with the resources available. This hence calls for strong leadership roles at all the levels ranging from the nurse unit and manager to the government officials in the health sector (Chan, 2013). Positive and efficient leadership approaches have been positively been correlated to patient outcomes and wide range of complications across different clinical settings (Davis, 2014). For instance, a study done by Roche, (2012) has linked effective leadership with reduced rates of urinary tract infection, pneumonia, and brain hemorrhage in the infants. Research has also shown that strong leadership in the nursing units has effectively lowered medical errors and patient fall (Hairr, 2014). Effective leadership styles results to lower patient hospitalization period, increased patient satisfaction and the general positive patient outcome. Generally, all these literature support the fact that effective leadership results to high quality care, high patient safety and reduced patient’s mortalities. Conclusion Different leadership styles may be used in the nursing sector depending on the working environment, the situation and the issue to be handled. Effective leadership style application promote loyalty, trust and job satisfaction by the staff members This in turn leads to increases level of patient safety, satisfaction and positive outcomes.