The Role of Leadership in Promoting Safety and Quality of Care
Leadership is a major skill for those in any health care profession at all levels. This is not only in the management position but also at all levels ranging from the student nurse to the nursing director. Excellent skills in nursing should be developed in the early years of the profession when the nurse is still under training; in the learning institutions, nurses are critical in the delivery of quality and safe health care. This paper summarizes the Health Science Journal (Volume 6, Issue 3: July- September 2012) whose corresponding author Stravrianopoulos Theodosios.
The Journal cited that in the 20th Century nurses focused actions are dramatically changing the structure of the nursing practice with the clinical nurses involving so much knowledge, expertise and a high understanding of providing the nursing care. Clinical nursing leadership mirrors are complicated in the culture, organization and practice as well as situational variables in the clinical nursing leader. This therefore calls for dedication in responding to the challenges facing the practice. These challenges include demands for quality delivery, slowing down of investments and those increasing need for safety and efficiency in the practice.
The leaders fill the gap by connecting the management and the nurses. They put strategies in place for the health authorities and identify key areas that require re-designing and improvements. These strategies are in a bid to reducing errors that may risk the patient’s life, increase the quality of service the patient gets from the health care which will in turn affect their safety and streamline the delivery process ion the health care facility. The research is based on the outcomes data analysis after which the results of the findings are communicated to the entire team. The team works on the implementation of the initiatives to dealing with the deficiencies thus improving safety.
Leadership in the health care facility facilitates discipline between the team of the care workers. The leaders manages the resources which include the supplies and the practitioners through an understanding of human interactions, communications, skills on problem solving, managing conflicts arising in the facility. This leads to teamwork, which leads to safety and quality services for the patients, their families, and the practitioners.
The journal argued that the clinical nursing leader is the first novice position in the nursing field after the nursing practitioner was introduced years ago and its main mandate is to ways in which the quality of the health care of the patient can be improved as well as finding out how the nurse can be prepared with skills and competencies required to thrive in the current and future health care system.
The major role of the Clinical Nurse Leader role involves liaising with the heath care fraternity which includes the physicians, the clinical, the patients and their families as well as other health professionals so as a the consumers of the heath care services received better services. When doing this, they adopt the best practices in all the disciplines and work on them to develop improved product. Proper leadership in the nursing field facilitates patient efficient movement from the health care system. This is from the period of severe illness to the time the patient returns to the families or communities.
The leaders in a health care facility should be determined and committed to bringing high levels of competencies so as that safety is upheld. They should work effectively and efficiently by collaborating with those within the facility, assessing the duties as of present and developing means of continued reviews that will fit in the organizations, the patients, their families and thus reduce occurrence of errors, which will lead to quality safety for the patients.
References
Theodosios, S. (2012). The clinical nurse leader. Health Science Journal. (Volume 6, Issue 3: July- September 2012).