Reflection Paper Sample on Nursing Managerial Leadership and Analysis

As a Nurse Manager, there are some fundamental skills necessary for personal career development that include educational and managerial purposes for the development of fellow nurses and mentees. According to the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) website, it is essential for a nurse in any leadership role to take the self-assessment competency assessment. The competency assessment is necessary for developing confidence in one's skills and capabilities and giving a chance for other professional nurses and especially leaders and managers to rate somebody and give them positive feedback necessary for self-growth (Mackoff & Meadows, 2017). I took the self-assessment test, and the report came back as follows: Personal and professional accountability (91%); Career planning (89%); Personal journey disciplines (94%) and, finally Reflective practice reference behaviors/tenets (92%). On the whole, I thought it was a more than fair assessment for my professional and personal skills; however, there is still room for improvement and growth from my position of leadership.

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From the AONE Nurse Leadership Competence Assessment Tool report, I scored the lowest in Career Planning. Hence, in my opinion, Career Planning should be where I strive to make the most improvement. As a Nurse Manager, I am aware that I have administrative duties and that in my work environment I have fellow nurses that happen to be my juniors. In my experience, I have noticed that the best ideas come from the inexperienced. In many situations in a hospital working environment, the implementation of a new plan can be traced back to a student nurse on a six month or less internship. In nursing and other medical professions, the experience is a crucial part of the job, but sometimes that same experience is the enemy of change and innovation. Hence, I have an idea for implementing change in the workplace for creating a closer-knit mentorship program. According to (Gagnon et al., 2015) while a student and newly graduated nurses in internship learn a lot from us the professionals, there is a lot that we can learn from them too. The first step towards the implementation of this mentorship program is encouraging the nurses (students, registered nurses, nurse managers and so on) to give their opinion on how hospital planning should go on. Horizontal communication channels should be encouraged at the hospital so that people especially student nurses in an internship can be encouraged to be more vocal.

In my plan, every nurse should get one or two fellow student nurse or even fellow professional to mentor personally. Nursing is a team effort, and the more professionals take care of each other, the better the services offered to service users, patients, stakeholders and other medical practitioners (Pollock et al., 2016). Nursing communication channels are still traditional, and I think it would be better to embrace technology in our communication channels. A twenty-year-old nursing student will pay more attention to a memo sent via WhatsApp compared to the one placed on the notice board in the hospital corridor. Social media can be a great tool especially to communicate with people of varying levels of professionalism (Sigalit et al., 2017). For example, a Whatsapp group where say twenty or thirty nurses employed by a hospital are all a part of can be an excellent communication channel given that the hospital has reliable internet.

These days wifi is installed virtually everywhere. There are distinct challenges to this idea of using digital communication channels such as the fact that social media requires a smartphone and not everyone likes smartphones especially older people but everyone has to be willing to compromise some of their personal preferences. A better communication channel is crucial to realize faster and more precise transfer of knowledge and skills. Management is a two-way street. A nurse mentor learns something from teaching a mentee. Mentoring is still an essential part of imparting skills and learning for both the nurse teacher and student. A more personal form of mentoring is good, and research has proven that when there is personalized learning to a certain degree, students are more receptive. Nursing is a field that has used apprenticeship all through history to teach students. Nursing courses are hospital-based and nurses from the time they are students have more of their teachers as practicing nurses compared to other non-medical professions. Hence, mentorship and nursing have a long history only that the methods and techniques need to keep up with the times and start using mainstream technology more officially (Piscotty et al., 2015). Many sociological and psychological studies have shown that the younger the person, the more he or she is receptive to change.

A change as significant as using technology to improve mentorship programs and communication channels is expected to receive some element of hostility. Aversion to change is high from the older generation of the nursing community. Having that in mind, we should not forget that nursing is a community, and hence personal opinions should be set aside in consideration of the future of the profession. As a leader, there is a degree of influence I have, and I intend to use this to good effect. Also, I am quite good at developing interpersonal relations with many people. I could use my socialization skills to influence fellow nurses to try out mentoring using technology and social media. It is a simple idea, but the advantage of simple ideas is that they are easy to implement practically.

References

Gagnon, M. P., Payne-Gagnon, J., Fortin, J. P., Pare, G., Cote, J., & Courcy, F. (2015). A learning organization in the service of knowledge management among nurses: A case study. International Journal of Information Management, 35(5), 636-642. Retrieved From https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401215000493

Mackoff, B. L., & Meadows, M. T. (2017). Examining the educational experiences and outcomes of the American Organization of Nurse Executives Nurse Manager Fellowship Program: a multiclass study. Journal of Nursing Administration, 47(5), 250-252. Retrieved From https://journals.lww.com/jonajournal/Citation/2017/05000/Examining_the_Educational_Experiences_and_Outcomes.3.aspx

Piscotty, R. J., Kalisch, B., & GraceyThomas, A. (2015). Impact of healthcare information technology on nursing practice. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 47(4), 287-293. Retrieved From https://sigmapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jnu.12138

Pollock, C. H., Rice, A. M., McMillan, A., & Veitch, L. (2016). How mentors use feedback on student performance to inform practice assessment in pre-registration nursing programmes in Scotland. Retrieved From https://www.nes.scot.nhs.uk/media/3694404/mentors__practice_assessment_feedback_project_2016.pdf

Sigalit, W., Sivia, B., & Michal, I. (2017). Factors associated with nursing students' resilience: communication skills course, use of social media and satisfaction with clinical placement. Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(2), 153-161. Retrieved From https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8755722316301211