Retention and staffing have a fundamental impact in modern-day healthcare. As it stands, most hospitals around the world are understaffed, and suffering from high employee attrition rates. These factors have several implications for quality patient care. First is that the remaining employees are often overworked, and have to care for more patients than they could feasibly handle. This results in medical mistakes, underwhelming care, and higher rates of burnout (Bianchi et al., 2018). Care fatigue is another issue that may develop in nurses as a result of increased workloads over a prolonged period of time (Bianchi et al., 2018). All of these, together, impact the quality of care and may endanger patients.
A nursing leader should be able to mitigate the issues outlined above while also increasing the quality, productivity, and team spirit in those around them. Barkerâs transformational nursing leadership model does not accurately these demands, as transformational leadership in general is not sustainable in day-to-day operations (Wei et al., 2019). It is useful when it is necessary to achieve a change in a particular environment, but a hospital cannot exist in a state of transformational change forever. Servant leadership skills, on the other hand, focus on the needs of nurses and staff, both physical and psychological, which are often ignored or unmet (Wei et al., 2019). In particular, servant leadership is useful when interacting with new nurses, as servant leaders are often nurturing and patient with others. Such an approach will increase long-term retention and in turn positively affect the quality of patient care.
Nevertheless, it is necessary for a nurse leader to be proficient in both transformational and servant leadership, possessing the qualities necessary for both. Change is a necessary process in healthcare, since new methods and norms are being introduced often (Bianchi et al., 2018; Wei et al., 2019). At the same time, for day-to-day engagements, it is better to perform in the function of a servant leader to ensure that precious and rare nurse employees feel that they are not alone in their struggles and can always rely on their leadersâ support.
References
Bianchi, M., Bagnasco, A., Bressan, V., Barisone, M., Timmins, F., Rossi, S., & Sasso, L. (2018). A review of the role of nurse leadership in promoting and sustaining evidenceâbased practice. Journal of Nursing Management, 26(8), 918-932.
Wei, H., Roberts, P., Strickler, J., & Corbett, R. W. (2019). Nurse leadersâ strategies to foster nurse resilience. Journal of Nursing Management, 27(4), 681-687.