Discussion Forum for Nursing Leadership Course

A nurse manager’s role is one of leadership. A person would therefore require excellent communication skills with people of all ages, genders and races. The nurse manger role requires a lot of responsibility and one must be able to accept this challenge and all the duties and responsibilities that are allocated with this skilled and professional line of work. Your nurse manager role would be to oversee that all duties and work responsibilities in a particular unit are done in accordance with the organization’s vision and mission statement.

As a nurse manager, you must be a reliable person, the organization would require that you live up to their needs and expectations and portray that for which they stand. Nurse Manager’s roles also involve the building of team leadership. Nurses within a particular unit should be able to work well together as a team and form a uniform whole; this will ensure the success of a nursing unit. In the given situation, the nurse manager should be able to resolve the problem wherein she will not be put into a situation that will affect on her credibility as a professional.

Whoever is under her authority, may it be a family or a friend, there is no excuse to disregarding her responsibilities as manager. The success of her leadership will depend on how she will handle the circumstances that comes her way. Within a position of authority, one should live and represent the organization for what it stands; this includes the ethics it follows and type of service it offers. Communication is a key tool that health care professionals must use to elicit cooperation among individuals in the delivery of health care services.

Communication among health professionals can: increase awareness of a health issue, problem, or solution; affect attitudes to create support for individual or collective action; demonstrate or illustrate skills; increase demand for health services; inform or reinforce knowledge, attitudes, or behavior. Healthcare institutions include many interacting groups: staff with staff, staff with patients, and staff with families and visitors, staff with physicians etc.

These interactions frequently lead to conflict. In which the manager is faced on with the complaints against Mary’s performance in their unit. Conflict is defined as an acknowledged struggle from differences in ideas, values, actions or feelings resulting in increased stress levels between two groups or two people. Usually, conflict is handled in one of five ways: reflecting differing degrees of aggressive, assertive, or passive, and cooperative or competitive behavior.

There are a lot of strategies to approach conflicts. In the case of Mary, the manager should employ the Collaboration approach which implies a mutual attention to the problem that utilizes the talents of all parties. In collaboration, the focus is on solving the problem, not defeating the opponent; the goal is to satisfy both parties’ concerns. It is appropriate for the manager to bring clashing groups together to mediate.

Before coming together for mediation, everyone in the groups needs to agree on the following: to get together to work on problems; that there are problems that can be solved; that all individuals have some responsibility for working toward solving the problems; that they are not expected to like one another at the conclusion but to understand one another better and be able to work together; that they are not expected to place blame on someone for the problem, but are expected to consider differences and come to a consensus about solutions(Hartley. 2007).

Coaching is an effective way to help staff identify and meet professional goals. The goal of nurse manager coaching is to make nurses responsible for their actions and redirect any resistance by determining goals, purpose, and vision (Powell, 2001). In this manner, Mary will realize that there is a problem that needs attention. And this way, too, everyone will be able to meet common goals and be successful in their endeavors.

References

The Healthcare performance Institute. (2006). Nurse Manager Role. Retrieved March 9, 2009, from http://www.healthcareperformanceinstitute.com/nurse-manager-role.jsp

National Center of Continuing Educatuion, Inc. (2009). Communication Strategies. Retrieved March 9, 2009, from http://www.nursece.com/onlinecourses/3453.html

CEUFast.com. (2007). Conflict Management. (2007). Retrieve March 9, 2009, from http://www.ceufast.com/courses/viewcourse.asp?id=91

Nurse.com. (2001). The Nurse Manager as Coach. (2001, July 2). Retrieved March 9, 2009, from http://include.nurse.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2001107020368