The effective delivery of the healthcare services requires the effective nursing leadership in order to ensure that the nursing staff is highly motivated to incorporate the healthcare services. The current paper enlightens the prevalence of low morale among the nursing staff and recommends the intervention of the effective leadership style to enhance the staff morale.
PICOT Statement
The current paper incorporates the following PICOT statement:
Among the nursing staff with low morale, can transformational leadership, compared to authoritarian leadership, increase the morale of the nursing staff in two months?
Problem: Low Morale among Nursing Staff
Intervention: Transformational Leadership
Comparison: Authoritarian Leadership
Outcome: Increased Morale among Nursing Staff
Time Frame: Two Months
Problem
The prevalence of ineffective nursing leadership style was observed in which the nurse leader was disregarding the input from the nursing staff and was making decisions without acquiring adequate feedback from the nursing staff. The nursing staff was not motivated or appreciated for their performance. The staff members were not supervised or guided in accordance with their skill and performance level, and the critical information about the patient care plans is also not shared effectively with the assigned nurses which eventually has reduced the quality of care. The prevalence of negative reinforcement is also observed when the acts of negligence in the provision of care and maintaining the healthcare standards was also observed.
The experience at the long-term nursing home enlightened the practice of authoritarian leadership style in which the lack of communication between the nurse leader and registered nurse was observed. The information about the implementation and modification in the care plans of patients was not communicated and the nursing staff was incorporating their assigned tasks without being provided with the adequate objectives and clinical outcomes. The decision making power was limited to the nurse leader and hence, the nursing staff lacked the adequate empowerment to utilize their potential and incorporate evidence based nursing interventions to increase the comfort level of the patients.
The nursing staff was not supervised adequately and was also not provided with the developmental feedback so that the staff members can reflect on their weaknesses and overcome them by means of a personnel development plan. The prevalence of adequate training and development was not observed and the negative reinforcement prevailed in which the staff required to incorporate over-time shifts or face monitory consequences under any negligence in the provision of primary care was observed. The lack of career development and supervisor / leader support reduced the morale of the staff due to which the staff members were not motivated to utilize their potential to achieve the clinical outcomes.
In the long-term nursing home, the care delivery system of functional care was observed in which the registered nurses were assigned to provide care to the patients by means of carrying out the tasks that are assigned by the nurse manager. These nurses were managed by the nurse leader / manager, who is also is in charge of maintaining a therapeutic relation with the patients. There were 5 registered nurses working at the facility and were providing care to 15 patients, however, the nurses were assigned to the tasks than the patients due to which lack of objectivity, role clarity, communication and professional development prevailed resulting in lack of morale.
Intervention
The nurse leader / manager has determined the low morale of the staff due to their decreased work engagement and clinical outcomes. The nurse leader understands that the change in the delegation style is necessary in order to increase the work engagement and morale of the nursing staff. The decreased clinical outcomes indicate that the standard level of care is not being provided to the patients due to which their clinical objectives are hindered. In this manner, after determining the prevalence of problem by means of the deteriorated staff morale, the nurse leader has recommended the proposition of enhancing the care delivery model from functional to primary care.
In primary care, the nurse staff will be assigned to the specific patients and will be responsible to follow the given care plans, observe and record the patient’s improvement level and develop the adequate interventions to ensure the achievement of the clinical outcomes. It will intrigue the nursing staff to utilize their potential and become highly engaged in providing care to the patients. The nurse leader has also identified the consequences in which the decreased clinical outcomes can result in the deteriorated patient outcomes.
In this manner, the health objectives of patients will not be achieved which will also question the quality of the long-term nursing care facility. The nurse manager is responsible to interact with the patients’ families and consultant physicians and delegate the care plan to the nursing staff. The nursing staff is not motivated due to the current delegation style due to which the performance and clinical outcomes are not being achieved due to the low staff morale. Therefore, the overall organizational performance and image will be decreased and hence, it is crucial to address this situation by means of enhancing the staff morale.
Literature Review
According to Frankel and PGCMS (2016), leaders are able to set the individual objectives, motivate the staff to accomplish these objectives and provide support to the staff in order to ensure the accomplishment of the assigned objectives. The effective leaders tend to inspire their followers to utilize their potential to achieve the mutually determined objective. In this manner, adequate supervision is also provided to the nursing staff in order to monitor and enhance their level of performance. Similarly, the provision of effective career counseling, professional and academic opportunities ensure that the nursing staff possesses a high morale to carry out their assigned duties and tasks in an effective manner.
Sherman and Pross (2010) have implied that transformational leadership ensures the development of future nurses due to which career pathways are eventually offered to the nursing staff. It helps in increasing the skills, knowledge and abilities of the nursing staff by means of empowering them to take adequate decisions to achieve the health objectives of the patients. In healthcare setting, the nursing leaders are suggested to incorporate the transformational leadership practices in which the leaders can set examples to inspire the nursing staff by means of following the nursing philosophy of leading by example.
According to Lee et al. (2011), the adequate feedback mechanism among the staff and the nurse should be incorporated to ensure the prevalence of effective supervision so that the staff can remain engaged in the shared values and objectives determined by the nurse manager. It will also reduce the prevalence of the negative reinforcement and will incorporate the effective performance management mechanism based on the performance and succession planning of the staff members. It can help in developing the healthy workplace environment by means of using the effective transformational leadership practices, which will also increase the morale of the staff.
The other facilities are observed to incorporate the primary care model in order to address the problem related to the prevalence of low staff morale. However, the implementation of transformational leadership style will ensure that the nursing staff is highly engaged in their assigned tasks, duties and responsibilities. It will also ensure that the nursing staff is provided with the adequate learning and development opportunities to enhance their skills, knowledge and abilities. It will make the performance management transparent due to which on-going feedback based on the performance will be provided that will be used to increase the skills of the morale by means of the positive reinforcement. In this manner, the proposed solution of practicing the transformational leadership style is considered adequate to address the discussed problem.
Comparison
In the current situation, the problem is being handled by using the authoritarian leadership style by the nurse manager in which the staff is not provided with the adequate feed related to their performance and is negatively reinforced to carry out their assigned duties. The staff is not communicated with the patient outcomes due to which the staff is not engaged with their related responsibilities. The developmental opportunities are not provided to the nursing staff because the staff is working on the assigned tasks rather than utilizing their skills, knowledge and abilities and incorporating the problem solving mechanism by using the evidence based nursing practices.
The nursing staff is not intrigued by their assigned tasks because the prevalence of role clarity does not exist. In this manner, the nursing staff is not enlightened with their work objectives and their integration with the patients’ healthcare outcomes and organizational outcomes. The nursing staff is not enlightened with the mechanism of succession planning due to which future promotion prospects are unknown and they tend to pursue their work tasks with low morale due to lack of guidance, challenge, feedback and supervision. The practice of transformational leadership style will address these concerns of the nursing staff and will increase their morale in an effective manner.
Outcome
The intervention that incorporates the practice of transformational leadership style by the nurse manager can enhance the morale of the nursing staff. The decreased morale and reduced the efficiency of the nursing staff due to which the clinical objectives are not accomplished in an effective manner. The prevalence of high morale will ensure that the nursing staff is utilizing their potential to achieve high performance outcomes by means of meeting the health objectives of the patients, which will eventually increase the clinical outcomes. At the organizational level, it will ensure the prevalence of the quality care, whereas the individuals tasks and objectives of the nursing staff will be accomplished in an effective manner.
Time Frame
The time frame of two months is proposed for the achievement of the high employee morale. In this time frame, the nurse leader will develop the individual objectives and will enlighten the nursing staff with the integration of individual objectives with the patient objectives and organizational objectives. The nursing staff will be enlightened with the prevalence of succession planning and possible promotions whereas, the nurse leader will also counsel the nursing staff with the adequate training sessions to enhance their knowledge, skills and abilities.
References
Frankel, A., & PGCMS, R. (2016). What leadership styles should senior nurses develop?. Nursing, 10, 32.
Lee, D., Coustasse, A., & Sikula Sr, A. (2011). Transformational leadership and workplace injury and absenteeism: Analysis of a National Nursing Assistant Survey. Health care management review, 36(4), 380-387.
Sherman, R., & Pross, E. (2010). Growing future nurse leaders to build and sustain healthy work environments at the unit level. OJIN: The online Journal of issues in nursing, 15(1).
