My hospital changed their managerial hierarchy over the last few years. Rather than the traditional model, they formed new roles of a nurse leader (mostly in the form of a charge nurse), a unit-based educator, an administrative assistant, a department director, and RN supervisors. The admin. assistant reports to the department director and oversees resource and material management for the floor and doubles as the ward secretary as needed. The unit-based educator is a leadership position that reports to the RN supervisor and oversees orientation, licensing and certificate requirements, and educating staff on policy and procedure changes.
They also double as floor nurses, as needed. The nurse leader is supposed to be strictly a leadership position, but manages staffing and bed assignments, deals with conflict resolution between staff or patients and families, and acts as a preceptor/mentor to new staff. They also take on patient assignments, as needed. The RN supervisor and department director are mainly management roles. The RN supervisor oversees the nurse leaders, the unit-based educators, and the administrative assistants in addition to any other staffing issues not covered by the nurse leader.
They are supposed to initiate change which is then filtered down through the other roles and eventually to the floor staff. NUR 514 Topic 2 DQ 1 From your experience in the health care industry, What Is The Difference Between Leadership And Management?
The point is one person is supposed to be primarily in a management role (the RN supervisor) and one as a leader (the nurse leader). Additionally, an RN (not a BSN) is the only education requirement for leadership and management positions in our facility. With this model, messages are lost in translation and the ball is dropped constantly.
There are too many cooks in the kitchen, as it were. I don’t know if it’s best, financially or not, to have two distinct positions: one as a manager and the other as a leader. I think an effective manager should possess good leadership skills and then enlist the natural leadership qualities found in their staff. I also believe, as Dr. Aaron has stated in other posts, that every manager should meet specific competencies such as the skills inventory found in the AACN. Higher education, if not graduate level education would also be helpful.
Leading and managing are related concepts but very different in their execution. Leading is concerned with influencing and motivating others to attain a set common goal or vision. Leading entails inspiring the team members, setting and carrying a vision and guiding others towards its attainment (Weiss et al., 2019). Leaders are considered role models and expected to exhibit certain qualities and attributes based on their style of leadership like empathy, integrity, listening, transformative, and building teamwork. On its part, managing is concerned with keeping the status quo through planning, organizing, and coordination as well as allocation of resources to attain certain objectives or goals (Gavin, 2019). Effective managers possess specific technical skills, knowledge, and expertise to attain set goals and objectives.
Advanced registered nurses (ARNs) can lead well and manage teams and resources through adopting an effective approach to both aspects in their clinical environment. The use of leadership models like transformation and servant leadership styles can help ARN to lead and also manage. Nurse leaders are essentially managers who possess sufficient skills, expertise, and knowledge due to their advanced training and experience as healthcare providers. Through these leadership styles, advanced registered nurses cab motivate their nursing team by demonstrating professionalism, commitment and empathy while interacting with their patients.
One strategy that I have used to lead is fostering open and effective communication among team members that allows all to share ideas and concerns while building a culture of trust and mutual respect. Care coordination, management of resources and meeting expected performance levels by nurses are critical duties of nurse managers (Potter et al., 2021). Therefore, a strategy to implement a monitoring system on performance is essential in attainment of set goals and objectives. These strategies are essential as they improve interactions with patients, team members and execution of daily tasks while also ensuring that all execute their responsibilities to attain quality care outcomes.
References
Gavin, M. (2019). Leadership vs. Management: What’s the Difference? Harvard Business
School Online. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/leadership-vs-management
Potter, P. A., Perry, A. G., Stockert, P. A., & Hall, A. (2021).