Nurse leaders who can effectively manage and inspire their staffs are a fundamental component of a well-run health care organization. The role of nurse leaders is particularly crucial in today’s increasingly complex health care field, as the industry braces for a mass exodus of retiring registered nurses and an influx of fresh, green talent.
Despite warnings of a health care talent shortage for the past several decades, developing new nurse leaders has been a low priority. Today, three factors are of particular concern to nurse leaders: the aging baby boomer population, the increased demand for medical services presented by this group, and the large number of registered nurses who will soon retire. Additionally, the increased risk of burnout and posttraumatic stress affecting nurses working during the COVID-19 pandemic poses a significant threat to the nursing workforce.
The retiring nurse factor represents one of the biggest challenges for provider organizations. These workplaces will experience a large influx of inexperienced nursing talent that will eventually comprise half the registered nursing pool in the U.S. This makes the cultivation of new nurse leaders vitally important.
It’s critical that current nurse leaders use the knowledge and skills honed through an advanced nursing program, such as an online post-master’s certificate in nursing, to prepare protégés for future health care challenges. With this in mind, the following nine nurse leadership qualities can aid nursing executives in fostering new leadership talent.
What is Nurse Leadership?
Effective nurse leadership strives to provide guidance to other nursing professionals and drive patient care forward. These nurses lead with encouragement and support to establish a positive environment that inspires the achievement of goals. Nurse leaders also keep their finger on the pulse of a health care facility’s many elements, from patient safety to budgeting hurdles. They draw on their own nursing expertise to help shape and optimize a facility’s care delivery strategies.
Nurse leaders can produce a profoundly positive impact on a facility. Their work can correlate to improved staff retention, reduced medical errors, and a more efficiently run facility. Collectively, these positives can result in a facility achieving improved patient outcomes.
How to Become a Nurse Leader
Nurse leaders aren’t made overnight. They are forged through a combination of education, experience, and certification. Nurse leadership roles typically require a minimum of a master’s degree from an accredited university. It is also critical for nurse leaders to gain experience as registered nurses prior to pursuing a leadership role. This experience helps nurses apply the knowledge and skills to lead other nurses in real-world patient settings.
Nurse leaders may also gain certification, such as the Clinical Nurse Leader certification offered by the Commission on Nurse Certification. Obtaining this credential not only confirms a nurse’s abilities as a leader in the field, but also keeps them up to date on the latest trends and policies shaping health care’s ever-shifting landscape. This type of certification is typically required to be renewed periodically; a process that helps keep a nurse leader’s knowledge base strong and current.
What Are 9 Nurse Leadership Qualities?
For nurse leadership to make a difference in a health care setting, those in the role must exhibit specific characteristics that create an environment of support and positivity. These qualities can enable a nurse leader to make key connections with their nursing staff, which can ultimately make providing guidance a much more organic and successful process.
1. Emotional Intelligence
In clinical settings, nurse leaders work closely with trainees to help them develop emotional intelligence. Such support helps peers cope with the stressors that present themselves during routine challenges. Nurse leaders assist trainees in managing those challenges and other counterproductive influences that can result in emotional exhaustion and poor team collaboration.
2. Integrity
Having integrity, and inspiring it in staff, are primary objectives for nurse leaders. Personal integrity aids nurse practitioners in making the right choices. Additionally, effective leaders are able to use and teach ethically viable practices that enable fledgling nurse leaders to intrinsically make safe and effective care decisions.
3. Critical Thinking
Nurse leaders guide unpolished practitioners in the use of critical thinking. The objective is to develop their ability to make decisions based on a complex array of factors. This skill is vital in a health care environment with increasing instances of multidisciplinary collaboration. The growing trend of increased autonomy for nurse practitioners also makes critical thinking a valuable professional skill.
4. Dedication to Excellence
Nurse leaders are committed to their passion and purpose, and exemplify this through their perseverance in the caregiving setting. To foster this trait among new nurses, leaders may assess performance regularly. All nurse leaders teach their charges dedication to excellence by delivering top-notch service themselves, so trainees can learn by example.
5. Communication Skills
The current multidisciplinary treatment environment greatly increases the importance of collaboration in the care provider setting. To facilitate collaboration, nurse leaders arrange for trainees to attend rounds while engaging with various medical professionals, such as support staff, primary care providers, and senior executives. Some health care organizations also establish recruitment retention teams, who might engage in these rounds with trainees.
6. Professional Socialization
During training, nurse leaders gain an intense understanding of patient-nurse dynamics. Nurse leaders focus on developing how trainees engage with patients after the triage process. Effective nurse leaders identify opportunities to develop new organizational leaders during this learning process.
7. Respect
Nurse leaders are passionate, dynamic influencers who inspire change in others and, in the process, win the respect and trust of their charges. To accomplish this, leaders teach communication techniques such as two-way communication and rephrasing to promote a workplace where stakeholders engage each other in a productive, positive manner. By understanding each other’s circumstances, trainees gain respect for their peers and nurse leaders.
8. Mentorship
Nurse leaders deploy motivational strategies that cater to the individual personalities of their trainees. By empowering trainees and guiding them toward understanding their roles as care providers, nurse leaders cultivate an environment of continual learning. While effective nurse leaders make every effort to identify learning opportunities, they give trainees enough autonomy so they don’t feel micromanaged.
9. Professionalism
Nursing is a dynamic profession that requires competent, confident leadership. As organizational leaders, these professionals represent the nursing field at nearly every professional point of contact. This will increase in significance as nurse leaders find themselves representing the field in the boardroom more frequently as time moves forward.
Nursing leadership will change over the next decade. It will be handed over to a new generation of nursing talent. These professionals will play a vital role in liaising between nurses and executive leaders in the evolving health care environment. Therefore, it is critical that current nurse leaders begin cultivating their replacements now. It is equally critical that the new generation of nurses pursue advanced training, such as Doctor of Nursing Practice accreditation, that will allow them to practice to the full extent of their capabilities.
Gain the Skills for Nurse Leadership
cross the country, a national shortage of primary care providers has set the stage for RNs to advance. As more states certify nurse practitioners as primary care providers, you can pursue a new avenue of nursing to fill meaningful opportunities in today’s health systems.
Discover how earning an advanced degree, such as an online post-master’s certificate from Regis College, can prepare you to guide the next generation of nurses.
Recommended Readings:
5 Resources for Nurse Practitioners for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
The Importance of Health Promotion for Family Nurse Practitioners
10 Best Practices to Promote Cultural Awareness in the Nursing Profession
Sources:
American Association of Colleges of Nursing, CNL Certification
American Hospital Association, “AONL CEO on How to Help Combat the Nursing Shortage”
American Nurses Association, “Growing Nurse Leaders: Their Perspectives on Nursing Leadership and Today’s Practice Environment”
Atlanta Journal Constitution, “What the Nursing Shortage Means for Healthcare”
Healthleaders, “Chief Nursing Officers’ View of Nurse Supply and Demand”
Houston Chronicle, “Importance of Strong Nursing Leadership”
Minority Nurse, “Why Leadership Matters for Nurses”