Introduction
The choice of leadership style and strategy has an important impact on the outcomes of any project or work-related task. When it comes to nursing, proper leadership style defines the way that a nurse leader distributes responsibility among team leaders and structures organizational hierarchies. The given paper discusses the approach to leadership and the strategy helping to reduce the number of avoidable ED visits.
Preferred Leadership Style
The choice of leadership style has an important impact on the outcomes of any project or work-related task. When it comes to nursing, proper leadership style defines the way that a nurse leader distributes responsibility among team leaders and structures organizational hierarchies. Modern researchers define leadership as the use of personal traits and well-developed skills in order to improve situations that involve a lack of information and, therefore, pose a threat to entire teams (Yoder-Wise, 2015).
When it comes to the most common leadership styles in nursing, it needs to be said that modern researchers usually single out transactional and transformational leadership, and the latter has a few substyles (Cope & Murray, 2017). In the case under consideration, the task of a nurse leader is to invent and implement the strategy that would allow reducing the number of unnecessary emergency department visits.
To provide a solution, I would choose the most popular rational leadership style – transformational leadership. This leadership style is often referred to as the most appropriate in difficult situations that involve high levels of job burnout in employees. Among its key advantages is the opportunity of a nurse leader to focus on improving the experience of followers, thereby providing education if necessary.
The given leadership style was chosen due to the specific features of the case – a large number of avoidable emergency department visits are likely to stem from an insufficient patient and staff education. The use of transformational leadership involves being a good example for your followers and motivating them. Also, transformational leadership seems to be the best style because sending patients to emergency departments needs to be preceded by a thorough analysis of their cases. With that in mind, the use of strict protocols peculiar to transactional leadership would not be extremely effective.
Strategy
As has been stated, the use of transformational leadership that values education, role models, mutual trust, and participation would be necessary in this case. The strategy that can be used in order to reduce the number of avoidable emergency department visits includes three important components: staff education, patient education, and resolving staff-patient conflicts. As for the first component of the strategy, it involves generalizing the knowledge concerning the most common causes of avoidable emergency department visits initiated by the given nursing home (performance assessment) (Spath, 2013).
The data on such cases is to be analyzed and presented to the staff in the form of recommendations on how to distinguish between typical emergency conditions in the given population and periodic problems. The same is to be done with regard to patients – they are to be provided with handout materials devoted to the signs of emergency conditions. Finally, some patients try to solve their communication problems and get more attention, pretending that they have emergency conditions. All nurses should be informed about effective ways to manage conflicts and prevent ED visits caused by malingering (Mason, Cardell, & Armstrong, 2014). The strategy has been chosen because it allows assessing the needs and knowledge gaps of all parties involved.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the transformational leadership style focused on collaboration with followers, and coaching them can be used to reduce the number of avoidable ED visits. The strategy involves the development of three sets of recommendations aimed at improving patient assessment skills and the knowledge of patients on emergency conditions. Finally, the strategy involves providing recommendations helping to prevent or resolve staff-patient conflicts that lead to unnecessary ED visits.
References
Cope, V., & Murray, M. (2017). Leadership styles in nursing. Nursing Standard, 31(43), 61-70.
Mason, A. M., Cardell, R., & Armstrong, M. (2014). Malingering psychosis: Guidelines for assessment and management. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 50(1), 51-57.
Spath, P. (2013). Introduction to healthcare quality management (2d ed.). Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press.
Yoder-Wise, P. S. (2015). Leading and managing in nursing (6th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby.