Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management
Melissa Sawyer
Grand Canyon University NRS-451
November 23, 2014

Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management Essential to any health care organization, leadership and management are in place to balance patient care, the facility, and its employees. Nursing is a patient driven profession based on interpersonal relationships, while nursing leadership styles are influenced by humanism. The overall attitude, behavior, direction, and mission of a health care organization start with leadership in the creation of direction and purpose of the facility. The purpose of this paper is to differentiate between leadership and management and describe the differences in approach to issues in nursing from leaders and managers. Management and Leadership are often used interchangeably yet distinct differences between the two exist. Leadership is defined as setting the direction for change, facilitating innovative practice, ensuring polices are up-to-date, and professional standards are set in relationship to care (Feltner, Mitchell, Norris, & Wolfle, 2008). Leadership influences the processes within an organization; the essence of leadership is the ability to influence others. Leaders establish the purpose of the organization, whereas managers carry out the established purpose (Azaare & Gross, 2011). Management involves planning, organizing, coordinating, and directing the work of employees to accomplish tasks in the most efficient manner. Managing involves communication and control of the use of information to implement the work of others while leading people to take action, and providing supervision. To be a leader involves the motivation of others to achieve higher standards. A strong nursing leader has the ability to encourage and motivate nurses to improve patient outcomes with exceptional nursing care, seek further education, and implement evidence-based practices. Motivation of staff can be a difficult task for nurse leaders or managers when facing common difficulties in practice, for instance staff shortages. The nursing shortage in the United States has had a cyclical pattern for many years. A fluctuation has occurred between periods of an abundance of nurses and even longer periods with a lack of nurses. Efforts to stabilize the nursing population have been made numerous times in the past. The workforce of nursing personnel is continuing to age, and nurses leave the profession faster than new graduates join so the crisis maintains growth. There are numerous reasons for loss of retention of nursing personnel. Nursing recruitment and retention is an area of focus to concentrate on to alleviate this problem. In effort to increase retention of nurses, President Bush signed the Nurse Reinvestment Act into law in 2002. The purpose of the act was the provision of scholarships and loans, recruitment through public services, and more in an effort to alleviate the nursing shortage. The ANA, AHA and other healthcare organizations, are making continuous legislative efforts to combat the nursing shortage. The act included bills to support efforts that entail the requirement of development of staffing systems.
As the nursing shortage continues to be an issue in today’s health care systems, nurses find themselves struggling to deal with an increase of legal and ethical dilemmas. The various struggles faced by nurses include an increased workload, decrease in amount of employed staff, maintaining practices in the parameters of standards, abiding by the ethical codes, and providing utmost quality of care. In spite of the shortage, nurses have a commitment to beneficence and nonmaleficence while maintaining autonomy to themselves and their patients. Provision of competent and safe care regardless of the situation faced is the professional obligation and legal duty of a nurse to their patients. A nurse must always put the patient’s needs before his or her