Essay On Nursing Leadership

Nursing is a profession in which strong leadership is required in order to maintain safe work environments and to maintain a high degree of ethical nursing care. According to the Canadian Nurses Association website, the “…attributes of a nurse leader include being an: advocate for quality care, a collaborator, an articulate communicator, a mentor, a risk taker, a role model and a visionary.” (2016). This important to think about as a nursing student, because there will be nursing leaders that we look up to and aspire to be like one day. Effective leaders are able to communicate and collaborate well in a team environment to ensure the safety of both their patients, and their colleagues. When I think about what leadership means to me, I think of someone who is of good moral character that wants to make a positive change. As I spend more time in my community service learning environment, it becomes more evident just how important it is to have nursing leaders in the health care field. Prior to entering nursing education, I have filled a leadership role on a number of different occasions. In high school, I was on the Student Leadership Council and had been voted in by my peers. In this position I was required to organize meetings and plan events that the whole school would be involved with. As an upper year’s representative, it was my job to voice the collective opinions of my peers to a variety of other authority figures. I was also the president of Photography Club so the typical tasks I performed were planning group activities for the week and I taught beginner photography classes for younger students with my teacher. Having a “servants heart”, or a very willing desire to help others in need is an extremely important aspect of my life and has been ingrained into my being. This is not to say that this is the only type of leadership style I can exhibit; it is just one that I use often alongside Transformational and other leadership styles. In my community service learning environment, I …show more content…
Both situational and transformational leadership are the most common leadership styles that I have witnessed. On the pediatric ward there is a very different attitude of optimism that I have not seen to the same degree on other wards. This optimism helps to effectively bring out one’s transformational leadership (Leach, L. S., 2005). Situational leadership is also important because it combines all leadership styles and exhibits aspects of them in different situations that may arise. At this point, I feel like I have not had a major leadership role in my agency, however I have had to show responsibility, empathy, and sometimes advocate for the needs of a patient. An example of this would be when I was playing with a little boy and he had an IV line in his hand that he said was hurting him quite badly but that he was too scared to tell his nurse because he did not want to be poked again. I had his best interests in mind so I found out which care team was responsible for his care and relayed the message so that they could appropriately deal with the situation. Many of the third year nursing students and their clinical educators have been great role models to observe because of their willingness to collaborate and help one another in times of stress or new situations. I truly believe that patients notice when nurses are effective leaders and