Leadership in nursing

Received: 10-Apr-2018 Accepted Date: Apr 12, 2018; Published: 20-Apr-2018

Citation: Ceylan H. Leadership in nursing. J Nurs Res Pract. 2018;2(2):20-21.

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Leadership is defined as the process of influencing individual and group behaviors in achieving common objectives. An effective leader is an honest, foreseeing, inspiring, equalitarian, supportive and reliable person who supports the changes, expresses his/her opinions clearly, listens people well and evaluates them objectively, uses his/her power appropriately, supports his/her group, respects others’ opinions, is aware of his/her own power, takes lessons from mistakes and has effective communication and management skills [1,2].

Leadership has many definitions as follows:

• Leadership is the process of influencing, directing and controlling the activities of an individual or group and also keeping up the group by putting them together in order to achieve the objectives in any case,

• Leadership is a function about the quality of an interaction between the leader and the followers which encourages the people in a group to make an effort voluntarily in order to achieve organizational objectives under certain conditions in a certain case, helps them achieve common objectives, conveys his/her experiences, make them pleased from the leadership style,

• Leadership is the process of influencing the related people, not having power over them,

• Leadership is the process of influencing the group for setting and realizing objectives,

• Leadership is the ability to make decisions through authority,

• Leadership is to provide and maintain moral unity for realizing the objectives,

• Leadership is the ability to bring people to success with the least conflict and the strongest cooperation,

• Leadership is to manage the group creating well-thought of actions such as purpose, culture, strategy, basic identities and critical processes, to build the future and to establish the team [3].

Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of the group in setting and achieving objectives. Leadership is a process which directs and activates the personnel’s in accordance with achieving the organizational objectives. Because of the reasons that can be expressed as the prepared plans cannot cover everything, the environment of hospitals is extremely dynamic and variable, hospitals have the tendency of growing as a result of the addition of new units, and perhaps the most important of all, the human factor in the organizations has a variable, unpredicted and complicated structure. hospital organizations need an effective leadership [4].

Leaders are not the classical managers in organizations. Leaders in health organizations should [5,6]:

• Be competent and well-trained in their fields,

• Always be open to development and innovations,

• Be able to integrate with the environment and be self-confident and trustworthy,

• Be accessible and communicate well,

• Be able to stimulate the personnel for groupwork and appreciate them,

• Be able to determine organizational vision, mission, politics, strategy and objectives and implement and evaluate and reform them.

• Shortly, a leader should be a participating leader who can constantly change and develop and create a common corporate culture [5].

Importance of leadership in nursing

The primary reason of leadership in nursing is to determine the appropriate goals and objectives for the organization. The leader, who will guide the nurse group in accordance with these goals and objectives and activate them within a plan, provides everyone’s ideas, demands and needs in the group to come at a common point together and disclose these common decisions and ideas and express themselves against other groups. A leader nurse should be aware that in the health sector, it is necessary to establish multidimensional relationships beyond the integration of the activities of the participants from different service disciplines. In order to establish connections and integration a leader nurse has the responsibility for identifying the existing and potential collaborators, creating a vision that can be shared among personnel’s in different conditions and environments, defining the value of the potential benefits of each participant to the enterprise, others and themselves, communicating by sharing information, rewarding participation and officializing this integrated effort at the right time. It depends on the leadership abilities of the nurses that the groups are able to be directed effectively to the right objectives, in accordance with their duties and responsibilities. Self-management and self-decision-making abilities of nurses increase the importance of the leadership more. For that reason, managerial nurse candidates who have leadership ability and leadership capacity should be recognized in time in order to improve their skills. A collective understanding in organization and success of this understanding almost depend on an effective leader nurse. With creativity, vision, continuous improvement of leadership qualifications, courage to take responsibility and risk, they bring success to the top by creating a learning-oriented and development supporting working atmosphere [6].

Nurses working in internal diseases, making vital and critical decisions and using practical and mental skills besides their cognitive skills should have critical thinking, problem solving and effective leadership skills. It is considered that the development of leadership skills can enhance the service quality of the active organization and satisfaction and facilitate the active role of nurses in solving problems related to the professional, interpersonal or working conditions that nurses experience. In a study analyzing the leadership tendencies of the nurses working in internal diseases clinics most of the nurses stated that they had the leadership qualifications (determined, patient and self-confident) as personal qualifications. They should have leadership qualifications in intellectual (critical thinking and problem-solving skills, experienced) and behavioral (sensitive, good listener, understanding, persuasive, collaborative) dimensions, namely, in all three dimensions [6].

Nurses, as a member of health team, interact with groups during the role of management and the care for patients. Since nurses realize the training and counselling services during this interaction, they need leadership qualifications. In preparing nurses to leadership it is important to acquire some qualifications such as taking risks, self-recognizing, coping with stress, creating a change, communication skills. Leadership is important for determining the atmosphere of the organization. Leaders provide a vision for the objectives of organization and a program on how to realize them. It is their responsibility to provide the necessary motivation, tools, knowledge and skills to achieve the stated objectives in the workplace. Leadership in nursing can be defined as a process in which a nurse influences the other ones in order to achieve certain objectives in providing nursing care to the patients and the healthy individuals. It can be suggested that the most important of the basic factors affecting job satisfaction and occupational complaints are the leadership behaviors by managers. One of the reasons influencing the general job satisfaction levels of the nurses is the way, the manner, the type of management. Nurses who are successful in their fields make changes. In order to do this, you should have the desire of power and control, a strong ego, flexibility and strong interpersonal relationships. These skills influencing the productivity and quality require the leadership knowledge and skills. Leadership qualifications in positive working environments are not limited with formal leaders. Positive working environments indicate that nurses are allowed to be autonomous, work with full capacity and take initiatives. Using full capacity of the personnel is on behalf of an organization. When the atmosphere of the organization supports the empowerment of personnel individually, nurses express more job satisfaction and patients get better results [6,7].

REFERENCES

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