NURS 8302 Assignment: Leadership Assessment ANSWER

The Assignment: (4–5 pages)

Explain your self-assessment in relation to the nurse leadership competencies. Be sure to identify your strengths and potential gaps in relation to these competencies.
Describe at least four goals for nurse leadership development that you would like to pursue, given the results of your self-assessment. Be specific.
Explain why these goals are pertinent to your development as a nurse leader. How will developing these leadership competencies support your healthcare organization or nursing practice? Be specific.

Leadership Assessment

The current health care environment is highly dynamic and requires a committed and motivated staff to deliver quality care. In this fast-paced practice, the role of leaders is critical, and nurses should have essential leadership competencies. These competencies develop over time as nurses interact with colleagues, solve health care problems, and engage in routine patient care. Self-assessment enables current and developing nurse leaders to determine their competency to lead. The strengths and gaps identified through a self-assessment allow nurses to set goals pertinent to individual development as leaders. This paper explains the results of self-assessment, goals based on strengths and potential gaps, and the relevance of the goals in the nursing practice.

Self-Assessment in Relation to Nurse Leadership Competencies

Competency Area	Level
Knowledge of the health care system	Expert
Communication and relationship building	Proficient
Leadership skills	Proficient
Professionalism	Expert
Business skills	Proficient

One of my high-performing areas is knowledge of the health care environment (expert level). In agreement with Sharp et al. (2018), the current health care environment is fast-paced, patient-centered, and data-driven. Also, it must focus on system transformation, improved access to care, and value-based care. Knowledge of the health care environment has much to do with understanding the features of the settings where care is provided, the broad array of services in such settings, and the relationships and methodologies required to facilitate competent patient care. Generally, I understand what patient care and patient needs entail and strategies for delivering efficient, cost-effective, and quality care.

In the current practice, nurses come across patients with different health needs. Empathy, cultural competence, and an in-depth understanding of patient issues are necessary to promote patient satisfaction (Oldland et al., 2020). Communication and relationship building enable health care providers to understand patients’ concerns, experiences, and preferences. As an active listener, I can effectively communicate with patients and colleagues in different practice areas. Active communication is also the foundation of interprofessional collaboration, enabling nurses to work in teams to deliver the required health care goals.

Like other professions, nursing has values that underpin the trust that the public has in service providers. In nursing and health care at large, the public is primarily the patients, while service providers represent health care professionals. Professionalism in health care involves services founded on honesty and compassion, confidentiality, and genuine concern for other people’s needs (Varkey, 2021). I show professionalism by being individually responsible for my actions and their consequences, paying attention to detail, and seeking creative interventions to put things right. Acting professionally also reduces the chances of conflict with colleagues, management, and patients.

A nurse cannot lead without understanding the self. In a highly diverse workplace environment, excellent leaders must trust and empower others. Like professionalism, leadership skills enable leaders to reduce conflicts since they understand how their actions, approaches to routine practice, communication, and values affect others. In terms of competency levels, my leadership skills are at the proficiency level. It is the same case with business skills. Key personal attributes in these areas include visionary thinking, valuing and acting on feedback, supporting nurse staffing, and utilizing technology.

Strengths and Potential Gaps

Adequate knowledge of the health care environment is mandatory for all nurse leaders. My strengths in this area include case management, quality improvement, and risk management skills. My knowledge and experience enable me to assess different environments, identify risks or performance gaps and propose appropriate interventions. Other strengths include clinical practice knowledge and delivery models. My strengths in communication include diversity and shared decision-making. However, it is vital to master both verbal and nonverbal communication. Other competency gaps include health care economics and policy knowledge, change management, and understanding of health care financing. My competency in information management, and technology should be improved too.

Patient safety in quality care in the care environment is one of the central focuses of healthcare facilities. Therefore, a proactive healthcare facility is usually engaged in various quality improvement efforts, which involves identifying gaps in patient care and implementing relevant strategies to address the gaps (Whitfill et al.,2018). The initiation of such quality improvement gaps, implementation of relevant interventions, and sustaining the same heavily hinges on the kind of leadership in the organization. The implication is that the leaders play a critical role in improving patient care as they assume the role of the force that drives change initiatives.

As a benchmark, nursing leadership has various competencies that a nurse leader has to achieve to enable them to appropriately lead in the care environment and drive change for quality improvement. As such, an individual should assess themselves to identify their strengths and weaknesses in relation to the nurse leadership competencies for better leadership (Huber, 2017). The purpose of this week’s assignment is to explain the self-assessment and connected to nurse leadership competencies and describe the goals of nurse leadership development to be pursued. In addition, the importance of such goals will be described.

Self-Assessment In Relation to the Nurse Leadership Competencies

As earlier indicated, nurse leaders should be competent to offer effective leadership in the care environment, hence a need for self-assessment to identify potential individual strengths and weaknesses. As such, a self-assessment was undertaken in relation to the nurse leadership competencies. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), the nurse leadership competencies include collaboration, communication, education, environmental health, ethics, evidence-based practice and research, leadership, resource utilization, quality of practice, and professional practice evaluations (Clipper & Dawson, 2018).

From the self-assessments, my strengths stood out in various competencies, while other competencies exposed various weaknesses. One of the competencies assessed was collaboration. From the results, this can be regarded as a major area of strength as I seamlessly collaborate with families and patients towards better care for them. In addition, I also effectively work together with other nurses and the management for collaborative relationships to improve patient care. However, the identified gap is in Interprofessional collaboration. I have to improve on how to collaborate with other healthcare professionals to improve care. In terms of communication competency, the assessment revealed strength is verbal and written communication. Besides, I have been able to concisely and clearly express ideas related to patient care. Good communication also involves attentively listening to what others are saying (Sibiya, 2018). This was exposed as an area of weakness as I have had a tendency to hurry others to talk faster when addressing issues. Therefore, such impatience negatively impacts communication efficiency.

I also performed a self-assessment in relation to environmental health. This is an area where I still have to develop competency to ensure that every nursing practice engaged in is healthy and environmentally safe. An environmentally safe environment will ensure that patients get quality care a good relationship exists between other professionals and myself (Huber, 2017). An assessment was also conducted on ethics. This was an area of strength as I have been able to demonstrate credibility, responsibility, and honesty as part of the elements displayed through integrity competency. However, a gap was identified in using ethical decision-making in clinical situations. There is still a need to further develop ethical decision-making in practice settings.

In terms of Evidenced-based practice and research, the self-assessments revealed the ability to integrate research findings and evidence into practice (Culyer et al., 2018). In addition to such indications, I have been able to demonstrate this competency through my learning capacity. The professional practice evaluations indicated high competency as I have been able to display self-development, self-insight, self-management, learning capacity, and self-awareness. However, I need to show adaptability to various situations to show a complete competency in the item. The self-assessment also revealed competency in quality of practice as I have displayed innovation and creativity to support quality improvement.

Goals for Nurse Leadership Development Goal

Self-assessment gives an individual an opportunity to grow by examining various weaknesses and strengths. Goals can then be formulated regarding the pursuant of nurse leadership development of interests. From the self-assessment, some of the goals include:

To increase hours of work contact with other healthcare professionals in the care environment to improve Interprofessional Collaboration-This nursing leadership goal is related to collaboration competency. It was noted as a gap during self-evaluation, and therefore, it would be prudent to pursue it and develop it fully for a complete competency.
To practice listening skills during conversations with the patients, their families, and fellow professionals for better communication- This nursing leadership development goal is connected to communication competency. Even though the self-assessment exercise revealed that I am largely competent in relation to this item, I need to listen more to improve further; hence it is a goal worth pursuing.

To practice clinical ethical decision making and engage more in the ethical situations in the care environment. This goal stemmed from ethics competency as the clinical and care environment usually calls nurses to make numerous ethical decisions regarding patient care and safety. Therefore, this s an area that should be pursued for complete development.

To show improvements on adaptability in various care settings by working in different care environment-This goal arises from the professional practice evaluations competency. Nurse leaders may be called upon to offer their leadership skills in different clinical environments; hence adaptability is key. By pursuing it, I will be able to seamlessly work in every new environment and offer the needed leadership qualities.

How the Goals are Pertinent to the Development as a Nurse Leader

Nurse leaders need to show various leadership abilities in the care environment to support efforts and interventions made to improve quality. As such, nurse leadership should formulate quality improvement initiatives, plan for their implementation and support similar interventions and initiatives (Huber, 2017). Therefore, as a nurse leader, the discussed goals are pertinent to my development. Besides, developing leadership competencies will help my healthcare organization in various ways. The first goal, “To increase hours of work contact with other healthcare professionals in the care environment to improve Interprofessional collaboration,” is pertinent to my development as a nurse leader since it will help me tap into other professionals’ pool of knowledge to help in improving care. Besides, I will substantially be able to develop my skills of care provided to the patients.

The second goal, “To practice listening skills during conversations with the patients, their families, and fellow professionals for better communication,” will greatly improve my relationship with the patients, their family members, and fellow nurses. This will ensure that I offer improved care and improve the working environment (Huber, 2017). The third goal, “To practice clinical ethical decision making and engage more on the ethical situations in the care environment,” is also pertinent as I will develop in terms of making better decisions in ethical situations to boost my professionalism and give the patient better care and services. The last objective, “To show improvements on adaptability in various care settings by working in different care environments,” will boost my ability to work in any care environment, even in the most challenging ones. This will enable me to grow professionally and become more competent as a nurse leader.

The Importance of Developing the Competency to my Organization

Healthcare organizations are constantly under pressure to offer safe, reliable, and quality patient care. Therefore, nurse leaders need to develop leadership competencies to help better the organizations achieve such goals. Developing competence in collaboration will improve care coordination activities, hence boosting the organization’s chances of offering quality care (Huber, 2017). In addition, the development of communication competency will help the organization in avoiding potential medical errors, which are majorly due to poor communication. Such errors are usually costly. By developing the competency in environmental health, I will support my organization in ensuring that the care environment is secure and safe for patients and promote relevant self-care and wellness programs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, leadership nature and structure in a healthcare organization can either foster or hinder patient quality improvement initiatives. Therefore, nurse leaders need to develop various leadership competencies as they directly relate to better and improve patient care and safety. This assignment has explored the nursing leadership competencies, self-assessment discussion regarding the competencies, and how the development of the competencies would help my organization.

References

Clipper, B., & Dawson, J. M. (2018). Key competencies for nursing. American Nurse Today, 13(2), 24-25.

Culyer, L. M., Jatulis, L. L., Cannistraci, P., & Brownell, C. A. (2018). Evidence-based teaching strategies that facilitate transfer of knowledge between theory and practice: What are nursing faculty using?. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 13(3), 174-179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teln.2018.03.003

Huber, D. (2017). Leadership and nursing care management-e-book. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Sibiya, M. N. (2018). Effective communication in nursing. Nursing, 19.

Whitfill, T., Gawel, M., & Auerbach, M. (2018). A simulation-based quality improvement initiative improves pediatric readiness in community hospitals. Pediatric emergency care, 34(6), 431-435. Doi: 10.1097/PEC.0000000000001233

Organizational and Leadership Strategies to Improve Patient Safety and Quality