Free Essay about Nursing Home Administrator Competencies and Skills

The nursing home administration is a specialized field in the management of not only medical but also health services. It incorporates the two distinct areas of healthcare and business. As a nursing home administrator, an individual has the great responsibility of supervising the clinical and administrative activities within nursing homes. The nursing home administrators must always be well updated on the emerging regulations and laws on health care and long-term-care facilities. Furthermore, the administrators must competently address all the infractions through developing progressive policies and ensuring their implementation. Nursing home administrators must, therefore, have competencies in various areas including communication and relationship management, leadership, professionalism, operations of the healthcare environment, business skills, and knowledge.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Nursing healthcare administrators must be competent in communication and relations management since they interact with different people who are in one way or the other stakeholders in the continuum of medical care (Suter, Arndt, Arthur, Parboosingh, Taylor, & Deutschlander, 2009). The administrator has to communicate effectively with patients, their families, vendors, fellow administrators, partners, and nurses. In fact, a typical nursing home administrator oversees the broader array of personnel, the financial operations of the facility, medical supplies, medical care and the entire spectrum of activities within the facility. Based on the complexity of tasks assigned to nursing administrators in real life, the person must have exemplary communication skills to create synergies and seamless systems of operations for better medical outcomes (Stefl & Bontempo, 2008). Through balanced communication, the administrator asserts to each stakeholder the sense of being important in the broader context of healthcare delivery especially in a situation where there are competing interests. I consider that through nursing education and practice, I have gained the requisite communication skills of listening, writing efficiently and presenting information concisely (Stefl & Bontempo, 2008). I embrace communication that reorients and nurtures all the participants in healthcare towards the primary goal of the facility as well as making them adheres to the organization's values.

Apart from competency in communication and relations management, the nursing home administrator must have leadership skills. The underpinning need for leadership abilities is the fact that an administrator's role is managing people with various professional expectations and ambitions which must be nurtured towards the corporate goals (Contino, 2004). Therefore, leadership is a necessary skill. The nursing home administrator must understand that leadership is not about being the boss but demonstrating restraint in helping people achieve the best outcomes. As a leader, the nursing home administrator must recognize the welfare needs and priorities of staff. After that, he or she should establish creative approaches for creating teamwork without comprising the need of the workers to align their priorities with the aspirations of the organization (Contino, 2004). Through maintaining extensive collaborations and networks with colleague healthcare professionals from different regions, I can remain sensitive to the organizational environment and use organic approaches for goal orientation and facilitate the establishment of beneficial regulatory changes.

The nursing home administrator must reinforce his or her leadership skills with strict adherence to professionalism. Professionalism in this sense implies that the administrator must remain steadfast even amidst management adversity. Since the nursing profession has various ethical requirements, the administrator must uphold and model an accountable system and great demeanor within the workforce (Shewchuk, O'connor, Fine, & Tyler, 2005). Though professionalism, the administrator can easily influence other workers to pursue not only lifelong learning but also embrace a steady understanding of the evolving principles and practice of nursing such as evidence-based care (Zhang, Luk, Arthur, & Wong, 2001). I understand that I professional development requires research, reading, and continuous learning which have helped me develop the ability to be ahead in the procurement of relevant information about professional growth and disseminating it to the juniors in a transparent, concise manner.

The nursing home administrator must also have adequate knowledge of the healthcare system. As an administrator, he has to understand the relationships between various aspects of the healthcare environment. For better management, an administrator must create a seamless and complementary interaction of all the relevant elements (Shewchuk, O'connor, Fine, & Tyler, 2005). Some of the specific components of the healthcare system which an individual administrator must be well conversant with include human resources operations, roles and responsibilities of staff, rights and obligations of patients and their families, the organizational risk policy and management of risks (Zhang, Luk, Arthur, & Wong, 2001). A critical consideration for nursing home administrators is the fact that the healthcare environment continues to undergo various regulatory changes that make it so dynamic. Through maintaining teamwork, consultations, and benchmarking, I have developed the ability to comprehend all the current practices as well as changes with the aim of responding to them appropriately.

The nursing home administration requires not only expertise in healthcare but also business skills. In a typical nursing facility, the administrator must have not only business-end healthcare skills but also be able to apply such knowledge in managing the various areas of operation relative to the performance of the organization (Zhang, Luk, Arthur, & Wong, 2001). For instance, the administrator must be able to draw a cost-benefit analysis of integrating technology in healthcare delivery based on projected and real-time evidence. In an ideal situation, an administrator must be able to identify the interventions or changes that are not likely to result in achievement of organizational goals and proactively eliminate them.

In conclusion, nursing home administration incorporates competencies in both healthcare and business. Therefore, a successful administrator must balance these two areas for better outcomes. Some of the specific competencies for a nursing home administrator include leadership skills, communication expertise, business excellence, and a comprehensive understanding of the not only the structure but also operations of the healthcare system.

References

Contino, D. S. (2004). Leadership competencies: knowledge, skills, and aptitudes nurses need to lead organizations effectively. Critical Care Nurse, 24(3), 52-64.

Shewchuk, R. M., O'connor, S. J., Fine, D. J., & Tyler, J. L. (2005). Building an understanding of the competencies needed for health administration practice. Journal of Healthcare Management, 50(1), 32.

Stefl, M. E., & Bontempo, C. A. (2008). Common competencies for all healthcare managers: The healthcare leadership alliance model. Journal of healthcare management, 53(6), 360.

Suter, E., Arndt, J., Arthur, N., Parboosingh, J., Taylor, E., & Deutschlander, S. (2009). Role understanding and effective communication as core competencies for collaborative practice. Journal of interprofessional care, 23(1), 41-51.

Zhang, Z. X., Luk, W., Arthur, D., & Wong, T. (2001). Nursing competencies: personal characteristics contributing to effective nursing performance. Journal of advanced nursing, 33(4), 467-474.