Module 6 Assignment 1: Qualities of a Nurse Leader Essay

Module 6 Assignment 1: Qualities of a Nurse Leader Essay

Qualities of a Nurse Leader Essay

Nurse leaders are crucial professionals in ensuring the delivery of quality care and a conducive working environment for staff. They possess a range of skills and competencies that help them succeed in their positions. Leaders often struggle to balance meeting organizational goals with keeping staff satisfied. They also require significant clinical expertise to make sound clinical care decisions, and the decisions at the management level have a significant impact on patient and staff health. This paper discusses the roles and responsibilities of a nurse manager, their perspectives on a just culture, insights from AONL resources, and compares the interview findings to the resource.

The Interview with the Nurse Manager

The answers below correspond to the nurse manager’s response to the respective questions.

• Kindly state your major roles in this facility as a nurse manager: The nurse manager’s roles are supervising clinical nursing work, coordinating care interventions, ensuring quality and regulatory compliance, organizational planning, quality improvement, budget development, and staff support.

• Please describe the nursing and inter-professional teams that operate in this facility/on this unit: The facility offers various services in various departments, such as outpatient, internal medicine, critical care, labor ward, maternal and child health, and pediatric care. Thus, many professionals, such as nurses, pharmacists, social workers, nutritionists, specialists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, physicians, and pharmacists work together to deliver holistic care. The facility relies on a holistic person-centered care approach.
• Can you provide an example of a nursing practice that has been changed in the last year based on current best evidence? Nursing practice is ever-evolving, and the most recent change was transitioning from the traditional manual blood pressure monitoring systems to modern digital automated blood pressure monitoring systems., The change aimed to improve care efficiency and accuracy and to increase the time nurses had to implement other care interventions.
• Please identify the impact of change within your organization and your role as a leader/manager in this change process. The nurse manager often serves in a leadership role, chairing or steering change, given her oversight of clinical care. The nurse manager supports change, advocates for the nursing profession, and supervises change implementation. The positive impacts of change include improved care outcomes, enhanced efficiency, and reduced care delivery errors. Negative impacts include the high costs of care delivery associated with some changes. Some changes are also ineffective despite being evidence-based, leading to poor outcomes and revenue loss.
• How has nursing informatics influenced change in the facility and care delivery? Nursing informatics has been a crucial tool in the utilization and adoption of healthcare technologies. The facility’s nurse informaticist is agile and ensures the facility is aware of new, evidence-based technologies and supports nursing through technological advancements. Nursing informatics has introduced technologies that streamline workflows, improve communication, reduce nurses’ fatigue, improve accuracy, and enhance interprofessional collaboration. It also helps collect, analyze, and use data to improve care delivery in the facility.
• Please identify strategies used for fiscal and human resources that contribute to the organization’s ability to deliver quality, cost-effective, patient-centered care. The facility uses various strategies to manage human resources, as they account for the largest share of healthcare spending, and their dynamicity requires robust strategies to keep finances in check. Strategies adopted included on-the-job training, cross-training, and incentivizing continuing education. Professionals are offered opportunities to gain knowledge in specialized areas and are encouraged to pursue higher education through educational leaves and positions befitting their skills. These strategies help ensure the right staffing skills and staff motivation while containing expenditure.
• What do you consider your biggest challenge as a leader/manager? The biggest problem identified is ensuring staff retention. Staff turnover is a menace because it increases hiring and training costs and also serves as an indicator of a poor working environment.
• What do you love most about your job? The ability to witness professional development and patient recovery journeys was identified as the major source of satisfaction.
• Why did you choose this job? The job selection was based on a desire to advocate for nursing excellence, given the profession’s role in care delivery and outcomes, drawing on clinical experience.
• What other kinds of nursing/other jobs did you ever do? The nurse manager explained that she has worked in various areas, including the labor ward, the male medical unit, and the pediatric unit. She also served as the charge nurse in the pediatric unit for a year. She was recently the assistant nursing manager in the facility before being appointed the nursing services manager.
• How would you describe your company’s culture? The facility’s culture is characterized by interprofessional collaboration, safety, and continuous development. The organizational policies and interventions are geared towards achieving safety, collaboration, and continuous development of professionals.
• How would you describe your role in admission and staffing decisions? The nurse manager spearheads the staffing decisions, including hiring, discipline, orientation, induction, and firing. The nurse manager also forecasts staffing needs and adjusts the facility’s resources accordingly.
• What is your leadership style? The nurse manager utilizes a transformational leadership style. The style blends well with her leadership role and desire to ensure professional development in the hospital.
• How are staff handled when they report errors or near misses? The facility has adopted national recommendations and implements non-punitive measures that focus on identifying and addressing systemic errors and avoiding blaming staff. Fair and transparent investigations are done, and corrective interventions are implemented during the change.
• What policies or strategies have been implemented to analyze accidents accurately? The goal is to eliminate assigning blame to individuals after errors, and the systems in place include an incident review committee that uses root cause analysis to prevent blame assignment. The review committee is not static and is tailored to each case to ensure fairness. The nurse manager chairs the committee and ensures incidents are analyzed and handled accordingly.
• What behaviors are consistently rewarded or discouraged here? The staff are rewarded for being all-rounded in the facility, for overall performance in care delivery, and for their influence on care outcomes. Reward systems such as “staff of the year” help motivate staff to deliver quality, holistic care. Failure to report medical errors, including near misses, is discouraged.
• Are there any trends observed in incident reporting? The nurse manager notes that there has been a significant decline in medical errors, but an increase in reported near-misses and medical errors.
• What metrics do you use to track progress towards a just culture? The metrics used to track progress towards a just culture include near-miss reporting and error reporting rates, and problem-solving timelines. The measures help determine the impact of strategies to improve incident reporting, a key component of a just culture.
• What support do you need from senior leadership to strengthen a just culture in this facility? Leadership support for a just culture includes training staff in a just culture and providing additional resources for the reward system. In addition, revising disciplinary policies to support a just culture is crucial and can further strengthen it. Another support intervention is availing timely feedback to facilitate timely action.

Compare and Contrast

The identified topic from the American Organization of Nursing Leadership (AONL) is the resource, “Improving Care: Empowering Staff to Drive Quality Initiatives” (American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL), n.d.). The key findings and recommendations of the resource (a leader’s dialogue on quality improvement) include the importance of empowering frontline staff and giving them ownership of quality work. In addition, the resource recommends providing clear, meaningful data to all frontline clinicians (do not assume they understand the data); setting and focusing on achievable goals (to build trust and momentum); leveraging technologies, including AI, to enhance care delivery and reduce workload; and fostering a culture of trust and teamwork to improve care outcomes (AONL, n.d.).

The interview findings and the resource findings are similar in many ways, with subtle differences, especially regarding a just culture. The interview revealed the nurse manager’s central role during change. The nurse manager noted that she supports nurses’ professional development to enhance their growth. The AONL resource notes that supporting frontline nurses and giving them ownership of the change enhances its success. The nurse manager notes that availing training resources and enhancing reward systems can help further support a just culture in the facility. Glarcher and Vaismoradi (2025) note that a nurse’s education in a just culture shapes their attitudes and practices in ensuring patient care and supports a culture of change among nurse practitioners.

The interview noted that the organization has a dynamic incident review committee chaired by the nurse manager to ensure fairness in care delivery. The team is structured by incident type to ensure thorough data evaluation and corrective interventions. The interview also notes that the facility utilizes a patient-centered, holistic approach to improve care delivery. In addition, the facility relies on review data to determine corrective actions, demonstrating alignment with the resource on the importance of reliable data in developing a just culture (Murray et al., 2023). The staff are adequately supported during change and protected from instant blame when errors occur. The resource recommends fostering a culture of trust and teamwork to improve outcomes. The interview and the resource also highlight the role of technology in healthcare, noting its importance in improving efficiency and reducing healthcare workloads. Healthcare technologies are crucial for eliminating redundant jobs and allowing nurses to focus their skills on other high-impact roles (Osipov & Skryl, 2021). However, the paper provides a perspective on the importance of leaders during change. While ensuring frontline personnel’s own change is a promising intervention, the role of leadership in supervision, decision-making, and resource provision cannot be underplayed.

Conclusion

The interview with the nurse manager opened eyes to the broader roles of the leaders and the accountability these professionals hold. The interview revealed their role in coordination, support staff, ensuring staff support, and improving care outcomes through technological integration. The resource discussed the role of data availability, frontline professionals’ support, a culture of teamwork and trust, and focusing on achievable jobs. Reliable data, staff support in error management, and technological integration are key tenets of a just culture, as evidenced by the resource and interview findings analysis.

References

American Organization for Nursing Leadership. (2022). Improving care: Empowering staff to drive quality initiatives. Accessed October 30^th 2025 from https://www.aonl.org/resource/Improving-Care-Empowering-Staff-to-Drive-Quality-Initiatives

Glarcher, M., & Vaismoradi, M. (2025). Promoting just culture in nursing education: A systematic integrative review on enhancing patient safety. Nurse Education Today, 106776. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2025.106776

Murray, J. S., Clifford, J., Larson, S., Lee, J. K., & Sculli, G. L. (2023). Implementing just culture to improve patient safety. Military Medicine, 188(7-8), 1596-1599. https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usac115

Osipov, V. S., & Skryl, T. V. (2021). Impact of digital technologies on the efficiency of healthcare delivery. In IoT in healthcare and ambient assisted living (pp. 243-261). Singapore: Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9897-5_12

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Assignment Description:

Module 6 Assignment 1: Qualities of a Nurse Leader Essay

Write a 1500-1750 word essay addressing each of the following points/questions. Be sure to completely answer all the questions for each bullet point. Separate each section in your paper with a clear heading that allows your professor to know which bullet you are addressing in that section of your paper. Support your ideas with at least two (2) sources in your essay. Make sure to reference the citations using the APA writing style for the essay. The cover page and reference page do not count toward the minimum word amount. Review the rubric criteria for this assignment.

This essay will consider the qualities of a nurse leader, based on an interview you will perform. It is important for nurse leaders to engage with other nurse leaders to understand professional roles; a practice experience is assigned to achieve this end.

• It is expected that you will spend 10 hours completing this assignment.
• The 10 hours includes the nurse leader interview and completing the written assignment.

The time spent with the nurse leader can be completed face to face or virtually through platforms such as FaceTime, Zoom, phone call, Teams, etc.

1. You will engage with and interview a nurse leader in person. You should begin thinking about this activity as soon as possible and identify how you will identify and gain access to the interview. Choose a nurse leader who holds a leadership nursing position in their organization. (Examples of this include the director of nursing, director, unit manager, coroner, board of nursing, professional organizations, policymakers, etc.). *** Please reach out to your instructor regarding any questions that you may have regarding choosing a leader.
2. Develop an interview guide before conducting the interview. Identify information that you want to know before the interview and plan clarifying questions. You must include at least one question about technology/informatics.

Conduct an interview regarding their professional role in the organization, and a current health care issue that is of interest to you (ethics, conflict management, budget, staffing, culture of safety, “just culture,” career advancement, quality improvement, etc.).

1. Go to the American Organization of Nurse Leader website (link is in additional resources).
2. Click on resources, then click on Nurse Resource Library;
3. Under Topics, choose a topic which closely resembles the content/issue of your nurse leader interview.
4. In your paper, compare and contrast the topic discussed in your interview. Include a citation from the selected resource to support your discussion.
5. Prepare a written APA-formatted paper of the interview.

Required questions below. Feel free to add to the list below but these questions must be asked to your interviewee and answered.

• Please describe the nursing and inter-professional teams that operate in this facility/on this unit.
• Can you provide an example of a nursing practice that has been changed in the last year based on current best evidence?
• Please identify the impact of change within your organization and your role as leader/manager in this change process
• Please identify strategies used for fiscal and human resources that contribute to the organization’s ability to deliver quality cost-effective patient-centered care
• What do you consider your biggest challenge as a leader/manager?
• What do you love most about your job?
• Why did you choose this job?
• What other kinds of nursing/other job did you ever do?
• How would you describe your company’s culture?
• How would you describe your role in admission and staffing decisions?
• What is your leadership style?

Additional Resources Link

American Organization for Nursing Leadership. (2022). Resource library.

Cagliostro, J. (2020, July 23). The role of nurses in cost savings & efficiency. Cost Savings, VIE Healthcare Blogs.

Sherman, R. (2018, March 15). The speed of change. Emerging Nurse Leader.

Barrow, J., Annamaraju, P. (2022). Change management in health care. National Library of Medicine.

National Library of Medicine. (2021). Nurses leading change. NIH.

Lartey, S. Montgomery, C. Olson, J., & Cummings, G. (2023). Leadership self-efficacy and nurses’ aspiration to leadership: An evolutionary concept analysis. International Journal of Nursing Studies.

Gardner, L. (2021). 7 steps to create a leadership development plan. Academy to innovate HR.

ProjectConcert

Project Concert Instructions for Students.docx

ProjectConcert. (n.d.). ProjectConcert documentation student experience.

Nurse Leaders | AHA. (2022, November 29). AONL.

Vertification of Field Experience Interview.pdf