Leadership Training And Qualifications For Nurses

Clinical Leadership Roles in Emergency Care Settings
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u 1. Project Aim PAGEREF _Toc10129011 \h 22. Background PAGEREF _Toc10129012 \h 22.1. Client Group Serviced PAGEREF _Toc10129013 \h 22.2. Anticipated Clinical Outcomes PAGEREF _Toc10129014 \h 33. Literature Review PAGEREF _Toc10129015 \h 33.1. Role of Nurse Leaders in Clinical Nursing in Emergency Care PAGEREF _Toc10129016 \h 33.2. Significance of Additional Training for Nurse Leaders in Emergency Care PAGEREF _Toc10129017 \h 54. Project Plan PAGEREF _Toc10129018 \h 64.1. Different Roles of Nurse Leaders in Clinical Leadership PAGEREF _Toc10129019 \h 64.2. Required Competencies to Fulfil Leadership Roles PAGEREF _Toc10129020 \h 85. Objectives and Evidence of Achievement PAGEREF _Toc10129021 \h 95.1. Implementation of Identified Competencies in the Nursing Project PAGEREF _Toc10129022 \h 95.2. Competencies among Nurse Leaders PAGEREF _Toc10129023 \h 106. Project Evaluation Plan PAGEREF _Toc10129024 \h 126.1. Evaluation Program for the Competencies among Trained Nurse Leaders PAGEREF _Toc10129025 \h 127. Project Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc10129026 \h 148. References PAGEREF _Toc10129027 \h 169.0. Appendices PAGEREF _Toc10129028 \h 21
Clinical Project Assignment
1. Project Aim
To understand and evaluate the impact of additional leadership training and qualifications on nurses in nursing leadership roles in emergency care settings.
2. Background
2.1. Client Group Serviced
The quality of medical care is regulated by different components, and one of the main ones is the management process of care. The adequacy of care in healthcare is significantly influenced by the professional competence of managers at various levels, their leadership, and their ability to create good working conditions and a system that motivates the clinical staff to provide a high quality of work (Numminen et al., 2016). Nurse practitioners occupy a special place in the health care industry, along with other health care workers (Trinkoff et al., 2015). The quality of nursing care provided to patients can be quantified as being a combination of characteristics, including medical and economic factors.
This clinical project recommends that extra leadership trainings and qualifications be emphasised for nurses in leadership roles in emergency care settings. The nurse leader in emergency care is responsible for a number of tasks based on strict criteria of care. The main criteria in delivering quality nursing care are accessibility, continuity and steadiness, safety, and effectiveness (Halcomb et al., 2016). Accessibility is the opportunity to receive necessary medical care regardless of economic, social, and other barriers, while continuity and steadiness ensure no delay and interruption in receiving medical care. Safety is about minimising the risk of possible complications or side effects of a treatment, while effectiveness ascertains the efficacy of nursing interventions that improve the patient’s health.
In order for a nurse to implement all the listed components, the leaders of nursing services need to pay special attention to the level of professional training of nursing staff, the correct execution of manipulations in appropriate conditions, and the style of communication with patients (Silva et al., 2017). Nurse leaders in an emergency care department are responsible for solving important strategic issues and making decisions in conditions of extreme instability (Echevarria, Patterson, & Krouse, 2017). In order to increase their competence to manage critical issues in the health care delivery process, nurse leaders are encouraged to gain competency through additional training and qualification.
2.2. Anticipated Clinical Outcomes
The anticipated clinical outcomes of this plan are multi-dimensional. identification of different functions and roles of nurse leaders to provide a better insight into their required training and qualifications. For this, the information about the roles and functions of nurse leaders will be obtained from textbooks and from the CINAHL, Science Direct, Google Scholar, and PubMed databases. Materials will be retrieved from CINAHL, Science Direct, Google Scholar, and PubMed. The second component is identifying, describing, and evaluating different nursing competencies based on what is required to fulfil a nurse leadership role in the emergency care department. Another important clinical outcome of this project describing and summarising nursing competencies and their prospective implementation in this training program. Finally, an evaluation program is formulated that assesses the competency of trained nurse leaders.
3. Literature Review
3.1. Role of Nurse Leaders in Clinical Nursing in Emergency Care
Medical care is understood to be a complex of diagnostic, therapeutic, rehabilitation, and preventive measures carried out according to established regulatory documents to achieve specific results (Osborn et al., 2015). That is, medical care is a multifactorial process, and, consequently, its assessment, control, provision, and improvement should be carried out in many directions (Asiri, Rohrer, Al-Surimi, Da’ar, & Ahmed, 2016). The effectiveness of the functioning of health care is determined by many parameters. The systematisation and organisation of the management of the relevant processes is an important step in creating a management system for ensuring the quality of medical care.
One of the most complex medical specialities in health care is the emergency care unit, which require specialists with high levels of responsibility and intensity, and who have appropriate physical and emotional capabilities (Regan, Laschinger, & Wong, 2016). Therefore, there is a need for medical and sociological understanding of the direction of changes in the social status and professional role of a nurse in an emergency care department. Besides, the modernisation of emergency health care has resulted in considerable differentiation and complication of professional nursing practices(West, Smithgall, Rosler, & Winn, 2016). Despite the fact that the dynamically changing situation in the field of medical professions is included in the research field of sociology of medicine, the professional role of a nurse is not well understood.
The role of a nurse in an emergency care unit has changed significantly. In most cases, a nurse is unable to respond and has very limited control over patients’ cases (Andreasson, Eriksson, & Dellve, 2016). Hence, modification of the health care delivery process is necessary. It is a chance to encourage nurses in emergency departments to be active and engage in professional development in order to improve the quality of the diagnostic and treatment processes. The introduction of a nurse leader position in an emergency care unit allows the application of theoretical knowledge in innovative technologies, pedagogy, management, psychology, and other disciplines in practice (Cant et al., 2016).
Emergency nurse leaders are obliged to maintain the standards of professional practice of emergency nursing (Grover, Porter, & Morphet, 2017). These standards support a conducive environment that enhances nursing retention and decreases the turnover of nursing staff (Nei, Snyder, & Litwiller, 2015). In this regard, it is important to have an idea of the conditions and mechanisms required to improve the professional status of leader nurses in the context.
The problem of enhancing the professional potential of nursing staff is not limited to the development and implementation of modern nursing technologies and new trajectories of professional activity (Edmonson, McCarthy, Trent-Adams, McCain, & Marshall, 2017). Rather, it is associated with the development of flexible legislative mechanisms that provide an opportunity to improve the social status and professional role of emergency care nurses (Ducharme, Bernhardt, Padula, & Adams, 2017). Thus, the evaluation of strategies for maintaining and changing the professional status and professional role of a nurse is important not only for the current state of emergency health care, but also for future changes in the quality of nursing care as a component of medical and emergency care.
3.2. Significance of Additional Training for Nurse Leaders in Emergency Care
In the professional medical community, the importance of the professional role of a nurse leader is clearly underestimated. In this regard, there is a need to change the attitude towards the nursing profession to rethink its professional potential (Ebrahimi et al., 2016). Several factors that have contributed to the fall in prestige of the nursing profession is its place in the professional hierarchy and the dominant stereotype about it being a helping profession, which creates an unattractive image for young people (Trinkoff et al., 2015). The urgency of solving this problem cannot be sufficiently emphasised, especially due to a significant level of retirement from the profession with no influx of young professionals (Stone, Cohen, and Pincus, 2017).
Additional training of nurses in emergency care is aimed at improving the overall professional activities of a nurse (Johansen & Cadmus, 2016). By means of additional qualification and training, a nurse leader will be able to combine a variety of personal qualities, communication skills, pedagogical skills, and competence in emergency care. The continuous training will also improve their competence and legal and psychological ability to make important decisions in emergency care as a leader of the team (Koskinen, Salminen, Stolt, & Leino‐Kilpi, 2015).
Moreover, the professionalism in the activities of nurses at all levels of the management hierarchy, ranging from the junior nurse to the senior nurse of the emergency department, is the key to success for improved health care delivery (Martin, Kocman, Stephens, Peden, & Pearse, 2017). Ultimately, improved quality and effectiveness of health services in the emergency care department rely not only on the work of nursing services, but also on the entire health care system.
An important aspect in the distribution of responsibilities in the emergency care department is improving the quality of nursing care. It includes rational distribution of personnel, redistribution of functions between middle and junior medical personnel, work planning, and reduction of non-production labour time (Dyess, Sherman, Pratt, & Chiang-Hanisko, 2016; Kossaify, Hleihel, & Lahoud, 2017).
4. Project Plan
4.1. Different Roles of Nurse Leaders in Clinical Leadership
The role of a nurse leader in emergency care clinical leadership is significant (Innes, Jackson, Plummer, & Elliott, 2017). The ethical duty of a nurse leader is to provide emergency medical care to a person who needs her in any conditions to the extent of her competence during the performance of her duties and at any other time (Olson & Stokes, 2016). The basic condition for nursing activity is professional competence (Echevarria, Patterson, & Krouse, 2017). A professionally qualified nurse should always comply with and maintain professional standards of activity as determined by the public health authority or the health care setting administration. Maintaining the level of professional, legal, and ethical competencies is a measure of the personal responsibility of each nurse leader (Cant et al., 2016). The achievement of this goal is ensured by the constant increase of knowledge (Woo, Lee, & San Tam, 2017). Therefore, the additional training and qualification of the nurse leader will prove to be significant for emergency care as well as other departments of the health care settings.
The competence of the nurse leaders is also effective in certain situations. For instance, if a colleague shows signs of incompetence, the nurse leader should take all measures to protect the interests of her patient (Stone et al., 2017). There are several ways to do this, for instance, pointing out a mistake to the colleague, offering help or, if ineffective, requesting the help of nursing managers. Another important role of nurses in emergency care is the humane treatment of the patient, as well as respect for their legal rights (Halcomb et al., 2016). The nurse should put compassion and respect for the patient's life above all else.
The nursing care is based on the consideration of values of the patients. Consequently, the care should be independent of cultural, national, religious, philosophical, or other features of the patient. In the event of a contradiction between the patient’s perspective and the ethical concept of a nurse within the framework of nursing care, the patient’s perspective is the priority (Kilpatrick et al., 2015).
Since the emergency care unit requires special training and qualifications, patients admitted to such a unit are requiring specialised care. No situation in which the patient experiences physical, moral, or spiritual suffering -- where suffering could be alleviated by the use of all available techniques and technologies -- can be considered ethical (Ailey, Lamb, Friese, & Christopher, 2015). In cases where a nurse sees the patient suffering and her knowledge and competencies are not enough to help the patient, her ethical duty is to immediately seek help from a more competent colleague or nurse leader. A nurse leader is not entitled to participate in any form of cruel and inhumane contact with people (de Luca, Zopunyan, Burke-Shyne, Papikyan,& Amiryan, 2017). In addition, any kind of intervention that causes physical, moral, or spiritual suffering to the patient that could have been prevented, even if performed with the patient’s consent, is considered unethical (Platt, Kwasky, & Spetz, 2016). Therefore, a nurse leader is responsible, within her competence, for ensuring the rights of the patient, as proclaimed by health care administrators.
4.2. Required Competencies to Fulfil Leadership Roles
A nurse has traditionally played a significant role in the public health system. In the personnel structure of medical institutions, nurses are one of the largest groups of medical workers (Samuel, Griffin, White, & Fitzpatrick, 2015). In most cases, it is the nursing staff that is the first, last, and most permanent medical worker who is in contact with the patient. Accordingly, there are certain competencies required for nurse leaders to be able to work in the emergency care department.
For instance, to work in the emergency care unit, nurse leaders should enhance their knowledge and expertise in the provision of medical assistance to the patients admitted to the department (West et al., 2016). Any ethical values of the patient should be respected by the nurse leader, even if the decisions made with regard to care are contrary to her personal value system (Olson & Stokes, 2016). In addition, in collaboration with medical or social systems, the nurse leader should actively intervene in situations in which the patient is being humiliated.
A nurse should respect patient confidentiality while maintaining standards of nursing practice that minimise intrusion into the patient’s personal space. Figure 1 (see Appendix section) presents the Krejci and Malin's Leadership Model of Competencies (Blair & Jansen, 2015). Furthermore, the nurse leader also manages the performance of the subordinate nurses working under her supervision.
5. Objectives and Evidence of Achievement
5.1. Implementation of Identified Competencies in the Nursing Project
Since nursing care is considered a separate independent area of medical activity, the competencies required for this profession are also exclusive. Today, health care needs a nurse leader who is not only a good performer but also a creative person (Trinkoff et al., 2015). The nurse leader also needs to be able to teach colleagues, patients and their relatives the skills of maintaining health and preventing disease, taking into account the patient’s psychological characteristics, home environment, and family relationships (Ross, Bevans, Brooks, Gibbons, & Wallen, 2017). Also, the decisive role of organising the work of nurses in any medical institution is that of the head of nursing service and that individual is the nurse leader (Platt, Kwasky, & Spetz, 2016). One of the main tasks in the management activities of the head nurse is to ensure high-quality nursing care in the emergency care unit as well as other respective units.
Similarly, a nurse leader in emergency care department should be the most competent, stable, and experienced health care professional on the team (Peres, Ezeagu, Sade, Souza, & Gómez-Torres, 2017). Hence, for those who want to acquire this type of professionalism and competence, it is important to attain additional training and qualification. This proposed plan is aimed at providing continuous training, qualification, and professional development to the nurse leaders in order to achieve the desired health outcomes for the patients admitted to an emergency care unit.
Several objectives and evidence of this proposed plan will be evaluated after the completion of this proposal. The program or plan looks into a number of functions and roles of the nurse leaders working in an emergency care unit so that the extent of the required training and qualification will be known and then evaluated. One more important objective of the program is to define and present the nursing competencies and their probable execution in this training program.
5.2. Competencies among Nurse Leaders
To determine the professional competence of a nurse leader, various sources should be emphasised. According to Strudwick, Hubert, and Gehrsn (2018), the problems of the competence approach are that experiences and capabilities are devoted to the leadership in the medical profession. In the recent medical practice, the conceptual basis of the competency-based approach has resulted in the formation of methodological tools. This has emerged in social theory as one of the most effective ways to resolve contradictions in the development of qualifications and experience of professionals.
Continuous education along with additional training allows a person, i.e. a nurse, to be competent in many related areas...