Summary
Leadership refers to the deliberate actions of individuals to offer proper guidelines that ensure health care facilities perform their roles according to the rules set by relevant authorities. This means that leadership is about coordinating the skills and experiences of workers to ensure they perform their duties according to their qualifications. It is necessary to explain that most leaders are good managers because they know the importance of following the procedures established to ensure there is order, productivity and efficiency in the provision of health care services. The effectiveness of a health care facility depends on how physicians, nurses and other stakeholders exhibit leadership skills when performing their duties. Exceptional leadership skills are indispensable in the health care profession because human life cannot be compromised.
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum on Leadership
He proposed that there is a need to ensure the concept of leadership is changed (United Arab Emirates 2011). This will give opportunities to those that are willing to transform their societies and themselves through unrelenting ambition and will to make life better. This statement means that the stereotypes about leadership are the major impediments that make institutions perform poorly. His Highness explains that ambition is an indispensable aspect that determines the leadership skills of an individual (United Arab Emirates 2011).
The statement means that a good leader must have the ambition to transform his society and himself. This means that a person that does not have ambition cannot be a good leader because he will not have a goal to accomplish. His Highness explains that leadership means identifying a gap or weakness in a system and working hard to correct it (United Arab Emirates 2011). This means that leadership ambitions are exhibited through the intentions of individuals to correct issues they think are not helpful in society. Most leaders get their positions on promises that they will change their societies and improve the standards of living of their members (Weiss 2013). However, this issue is not given the desired attention by most individuals and organizations. Therefore, people become leaders yet they do not have ambitions that will play important roles in transforming their societies. This means that they will have no impacts on their institutions and themselves and this will translate to normal routines that have poor results.
Secondly, His Highness identifies the will to transform individuals and society as an important leadership trait. He focused his argument on an individual’s personality and realized that it is impossible for an individual to change his society if he does not have the will to improve his personality (United Arab Emirates 2011). This means that an individual and his society are inseparable when it comes to the elements that determine effective leadership skills. People must have the will to identify and initiate changes that will make their societies better and transform their lives. His Highness believed that a society is comprised of individuals from different backgrounds. Therefore, a person must have the will to transform his personality before he can duplicate this aspect in other members. This will ensure that society is transformed starting from an individual’s approach.
These concepts of leadership can be applied in the health care sector to ensure there are positive changes that will improve human life. Clinicians must have the ambition of ensuring that human health is promoted through the prevention of diseases. It is necessary to explain that most nurses are driven to pursue this career because of what they experience during their early childhood. Inadequate proper medical services and ignorance on disease prevention methods propels these individuals to want to study nursing and other related courses to ensure they help their family and society members to live healthy lives. Therefore, they develop the ambition of wanting to know more about how to improve human life. In addition, the challenges that people experience regarding the provision of health care services expose them to risks of death or unnecessary expenses to treat infections. Nurses usually have the ambition of ensuring that their patients have access to quality health care services that will help them in improving their health.
In addition, the statement by His Highness explains that leaders must have the will to transform the concept of leadership and ensure self-interest comes after offering quality services to patients and society. Nurses must be willing to put their lives at risk to save those of their patients. This means that they must ensure they dedicate their time, energy, resources, experience and skills to their profession to ensure they do their best to promote good health and ensure patients recover as soon as possible. Will refers to a force that pushes individuals to do things and it makes them overlook other aspects of their lives to ensure they accomplish their objectives. Therefore, nurses that are willing to transform themselves to ensure they offer quality services are the best leaders suitable to work in health care facilities.
Prevailing Anachronistic Concept of Leadership
Most nurses exhibit an autocratic leadership style that is characterized by the use of excessive force to control the decision-making process and ignore contributions from other members. Most nurses forget that they cannot manage health care facilities themselves unless that is assisted by others. The contributions of teamwork in achieving the goals of a health care facility cannot be underestimated. A good nurse must ensure that all members of this fraternity are given reasonable and appropriate attention when discharging his duties (Malloch 2010). Consultations amongst nurses are important in ensuring that the health of patients is protected without difficulties.
It is necessary for nurses to ensure that they involve their colleagues in implementing the policies of their facilities. This will enhance coordination, unity and understanding amongst them and ensure they accomplish their objectives easily. Health care facility managers and supervisors must involve other stakeholders in making decisions to ensure there is consensus amongst them. This is an important way of ensuring that these facilities promote the measures established to promote good health and prevent diseases. Nurses should not make decisions based on their own ideas and judgment because this may compromise the quality of services they offer to patients. They should accept advice from others to ensure they make informed choices that will help patients to recover from health complications.
Opportunism is another anachronistic trait exhibited by poor nurse leaders. This concept refers to the use of excuses to explain underperformance and seeking scapegoats not to attend to patients. Nurses should realize that their jobs offer them opportunities to be leaders in society because people depend on them for treatment and disease prevention interventions. Therefore, they should act as leaders and avoid raising issues to explain why they do not perform well in their duties.
Links between Ambition and Leadership
Ambition is the ability to identify a course and strive to achieve it. This means that people must have dreams and work hard to achieve them to ensure they fulfill their ambitions. Nursing is a very complicated career because its ambition is on fulfilling the health needs of patients and communities (Maccoboy 2013). This means that the ambition of nurses is determined by the existing health challenges facing their patients. Nurses may have several ambitions they wish to fulfill within a specified time, but the urgency of each aspect determines the attention given to it. For instance, nurses must have the ambition to promote good health by preventing the spread of diseases and offering interventions that will ensure patients recover from their ailments.
However, issues like disease outbreaks make nurses place aside some of their ambitions and work towards controlling the existing situations that will ensure the spread of communicable diseases is controlled. This means that the role of nurses as leaders should not be fixed on their areas of specialization. Other leadership skills are exhibited by nurses. It is necessary to explain that most leadership aspects of nurses are evident in the manner they manage situations (Rubino 2013). A good nurse leader must have an ambition of ensuring the health of patients suffering from long and short-term diseases is promoted at all costs.
Sometimes, the provision of palliative care becomes a challenging aspect in nursing and most members of this profession fail to discharge their duties properly. However, those that have ambitions ensure they work against all odds to promote disease prevention and treatment approaches to safeguard the health of patients and their society. This is an important aspect that shows the importance of ambition in nurse leaders.
In addition, ambition pushes nurses to seek additional training in various fields. It is necessary to explain to those moist nurses who graduate with first diplomas or degrees realize that the knowledge and skills gained are not adequate to help them to perform their duties effectively (Crowell 2010). Therefore, they register for evening or online classes to ensure they acquire additional knowledge that will help them to become better nurses. It is necessary to explain that good leaders are usually ready to learn new things and improve their existing academic qualifications. Therefore, their ambition to achieve knowledge that will help them to manage health care issues properly motivates them to become good leaders because they will acquire training and experience in this field.
Thirdly, health care challenges are many and they keep changing depending on the standards of living of people. This means that nurses will never have adequate knowledge to manage health complications in society. Therefore, they usually have ambitions of attending refresher courses to ensure they acquire modern approaches to managing health complications (Grady 2012). This helps them to know how to manage diseases, even though they keep transforming. There are high chances that nurses that attend refresher courses become good leaders because they are able to control others and show them what to do. Therefore, ambition is an important aspect of health care provision because it enables physicians to have knowledge on modern approaches to managing infections.
Self-Efficacy and Leadership
Health care is a unique profession because it requires a high level of precision. Nurses cannot gamble with human life because it is irreplaceable. Nurses must be sure about what they do to ensure they offer quality services to clients. A minor mistake in the provision of health care services can cause the deaths of patients and expose another member so the public to infections (Dye 2010). In addition, the human body is very delicate and must be handled with care. Physicians take a very long time to train and become qualified practitioners because they need to be well equipped with knowledge, experience and skills in managing patients.
Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s ability to measure his performance in terms of achieving the expected results. Nurses have targets that are not easy to achieve because they do not have the power to determine the fate of their patients. It is necessary to explain that self-efficacy enables nurses to establish approaches that will help them to work with their colleagues and patients to ensure they achieve their objectives (Mason 2013). A nurse cannot single-handedly prevent a person from contracting infections; similarly, he does not have the ability to treat diseases. Therefore, their self-efficacy is linked to their cooperation with their colleagues and how they interact with patients.
This means that a nurse cannot determine his abilities without considering the assistance offered by other stakeholders. Leadership in health care facilities is determined by how nurses evaluate their abilities to accomplish their objectives and those set by their supervisors and the public (Stanhope 2011). People expect nurses to help them overcome their health challenges because they believe that they have the necessary experience and academic qualifications that will help them to do so. Therefore, they vest their hope and trust on nurses to help them and this means that health care providers must ensure they do not let down their patients. They should evaluate their abilities and take appropriate measures to improve them.
In addition, nurses have various abilities, training and skills and this determine their effectiveness in managing health complications (Barr 2014). Therefore, a good nurse must not think that he is incompetent if he does not have the ability to help a patient. Leadership skills in such nurses are exhibited through seeking assistance from colleagues or referring their patients to specialists.
Importance of Health Leadership in Managing Specialised Clinical Outcome
Specialized clinical outcomes are very complicated and require leadership skills that will manage them according to how they manifest in patients. Hospital-acquired infections (nosocomial infections) are common in health care facilities that do not pay attention to the need to promote healthy practices in hospitals. Health leadership ensures all policies regarding hospital visits are observed and all visitors are educated on the procedures to be followed (Lluch 2011). In addition, health leaders should ensure they follow visitors and offer them assistance in case they are stranded regarding the procedures to be followed during hospital visits. They ensure that hospitals have clean and disinfected environments to prevent the development and spread of nosocomial infections.
In addition, health leadership is important in ensuring that the society implements the policies established to ensure that their environments are kept healthy and free from conditions that may cause disease outbreaks. Healthy cities’ policies can only be achieved if health practitioners have excellent communication skills that will help the public to realize and understand the need to keep its environment healthy. Moreover, they should focus on ensuring that they offer professional guidance that will help the public to understand and use various approaches that will improve the hygiene standards of the locals.
References
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Dye, C 2010, Leadership in Healthcare: Essential Values and Skills (ACHE Management), Health Administration Press, New York.
Grady, T 2012, Leadership in Nursing Practice: Changing the Landscape of Health Care, Jones and Bartlett, Massachusetts.
Lluch, M 2011, ‘Healthcare professionals’ organizational barriers to health information technologies: a literature review’, International Journal of Medical Informatics, vol. 80, pp. 849-862.
Maccoboy, M 2013, Transforming Health Care Leadership: A Systems Guide to Improve Patient Care, Decrease Costs, and Improve Population Health, Jossey-Bass, New Jersey.
Malloch, K 2010, Quantum Leadership: Advancing Innovation, Transforming Health Care, Jones and Bartlett, Massachusetts.
Mason, D 2013, Policy and Politics in Nursing and Healthcare – Revised Reprint (Mason, Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care), Saunders, Philadelphia.
Rubino, L 2013, New Leadership for Today’s Health Care Professionals: Concepts and Cases, Jones and Bartlett, Massachusetts.
Stanhope, M 2011, Public Health Nursing: Population-Centered Health Care in the Community, 8e, Mosby, Missouri.
United Arab Emirates 2011, Highlights of the U. A. E. Government strategy 2011-2013. Putting citizens first, Web.
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