Reflective Essay on an Interview with a Nursing Leader

Nursing management plays critical roles in the hospital setting. The management team is responsible for the overall running of the nursing duties. It is well understood that nursing is one of the most important segments of the hospital given the role of change initialization that nurses play. The critical role of the nurses makes them have several management sections for the smoothing running of the hospital. There are various management departments having different managers that help in the running of the nursing department. This article discusses the roles of the nursing manager and the importance of nursing management. The nursing managers work as a coordinated team, and their roles are discussed in this work following an interview with one of the nursing leaders. The information gathered from the interview is described with the aid of Gibbs reflective cycle.

Description

Understanding the role of nursing managers is important for the purpose of understanding the various functions of the staff in the hospital. The manager who took part in the interview had about twenty years of experience in the field of nursing. The focus of the interview was to analyze all the aspects of the field of nursing the focus of the interview was roles of the nursing managing. The success of the interview was anchored upon the fact that the interviewer was a senior person in the nursing department.

The interview was conducted in the environment of the hospital to ensure observation of the provided information in real-time. Questions pertaining to the various departments were asked, and answers were given with a description of the department. In fact, the interview involved moving from one department to another as answers were provided. Moving from one section to another of the caregiving department helped to give a better understanding of the concerns concerning the roles of the nurse managers and nursing leadership. In fact, it made the responses to make more sense. In psychology, this would be described as the best strategy for their call of information.

Feeling

According to the experience of the interview, it was evident that nurses play an important role in the hospital setting. I tend to think, after the experience of the interview, that nurses play a pivotal role in the hospital. My honest feeling is that without the nurses it would not be possible to impact any changes on the life of the patients. Despite the fact that prescription of the medicine is always left in charge of the physicians, the role of nurses in ensuring that prescribed medicine worked cannot be underrated. Since people suffering from different conditions; I believe that nurses must also have specialization in order to meet the daily medication of the patients and bring changes in their lives. Probably, this explains why different nurse managers would be put in charge of the different nursing department to head.

I tend to the think that the nursing leader is the most experienced nurses in the hospital. I believe the choice to settle for the most experienced nurse is a great idea. The people with so many years of service in the hospital have been exposed to diverse patients conditions in the hospitals. Dealing with these conditions is not always easy. Prior knowledge of a situation and how it was dealt with gives a heads up on how to quickly manage the situation. The psychologist has always mentioned that experience has been the best teacher in the entire history.

The nurse leader being interviewed felt so happy responding to our inquiries about the sector of nursing. The basic of this is the belief that very little information is always known about nurses and the roles they play. Most people have always considered nursing to be a lesser department in the hospitals. This perception has always emanated from the fact that most people associate the treatment process with the medication given (Master, 2015). In fact, this gives a view of the treatment process being an event. However, the nurses help give the best understanding of the treatment received in the hospital. Therefore, the best way to make everyone understand that treatment is a process that is made possible by the change champions who are the nurses is through showing them what actually occurs in the nursing field. This explains the reason why the change leader was enthusiastic explaining the roles of nurse leaders and nursing management.

The moments spent within the confines of the nursing department during this interview were part of the most life challenging experience we ever had. Just looking at the nurses run up and down as they discharge their duties while dealing with patients having different conditions made us appreciate not only their roles but the meaning of life itself. The general feeling was that nursing is a complicated calling and whatever role someone plays in the nursing department, everyone is useful and contribute immensely to the quality of life of the patients. The various divisions of the nursing department combined together would give an understanding of the roles of the nurses and their leaders. The most important thing is that they contribute to the well-being of the patients at different capacities (Tomey, 2009).

Evaluation

According to the interview, it was evident that nurses play an entirely different role in the health caregiving. The most troubling fact was that they are the most looked-down-upon healthcare professionals. Despite this bitter fact, they are very important to the caregiving process whereby they have always been branded as the agents of change in the hospital. The name agents of change is a big name, and it somehow tries to give a description of their function. Whereas their roles can be split into numerous different functions that were mainly mentioned in the interview, bringing change is the center of concentration of every function.

The various roles played by the nurse leadership heavily depends on the department they are assigned. Ability to work in particular depend mainly by the on the skills and the competencies most of which are accrued through learning. The skills of a nurse leader can always be graded based on the number of years they have been in the field. Exposure in the field of nursing for longer periods enables a nurse to be able to handle a leadership role. On the contrary, there are other requirements that can never be overlooked, for instance, the past records and leadership duties that were handled before. To put this into perspective, the nurse with the best qualities if often chosen to lead other nurses within their field of specialization in the nursing sector.

The interview revealed that different roles are assigned to different people. The reality of the matter. The importance of having experience is revealed especially in the managerial acquisition position. This makes perfect sense since it is not logical to have someone with limited experience leading other nurses. Under such circumstances, it is obvious that there would be so many mistakes especially due to the fact that leadership influences the decision made and without experience, it is possible to be prone to wrong conclusions. The managerial roles are mainly not about how well someone has been to school, but they are about how much experience someone ha in the field of nursing. It was revealed that the duty of the management is the heaviest since they would have to bring together people of different characters, cultures, and ability to work together for the achievement of the objective of their department (Sellgren, Ekvall & Tomson, 2006).

The roles of the nurses are distributed based on the departmental location. It is not possible to achieve the best outcome without clear delegation of duties and definition of roles. The nursing management forms the basis of the process of delegation of duties to different nurses. The delegation of duties brings about specialization which leads to the best possible outcome in the field of nursing. A specialized nursing system leads to a specialized way of dealing with challenges that erupt in the field of nursing. The areas of specialization define the departments thus giving the nursing the manager who would be in that department. The best of the nurses in the area of specialization is chosen to lead the department (Master, 2015).

Analysis of the information gathered

Roles of Nurse Managers

The roles of the nurse manager were learned from the different through answering the questions and observation. Collecting information about the roles was the most critical process in the interview. Reflecting on the information gathered, it was evident that nursing management is an important pillar to every nursing department in a hospital. Moreover, it was revealed that nursing department is further divided into other departments based on the specialization level of the nurses.

The clinical nurse managers are among the very important nurses in the caregiving department. The clinical nurse managers perform a professional duty. They are mainly in charge of hospital units such as ER, ICU, and Paediatrics. Each clinical nurse manager would lead nurses only in their area of specialization. For instance, a clinical nurse manager with a specialty in pediatrics would be responsible for the team of nurses in the pediatrics department. All the nurses in this department would report to them with regards to their duties. Moreover, they would be held responsible in case any problems would erupt in their department. Therefore, they have to ensure the best performance of the nurses they lead (Linton & Prasun, 2013).

Nurse case managers are among the nurse managers whose duty requires them to be a little closer to the patients rather than the nurses they lead. Sometimes, the nurse case managers would be involved in the formulation and follow-up with the insurance plans that would work out as the best for their patients. Majorly, these nurses help in coordination of the treatment of the patients. These nurses also concentrate on the process of tracking the change that takes place after the patients are administered with treatment. They are interested in coming up with the best treatment plan for the patients (Phillips, 2005).

The Geriatric Care Nurse Manager specializes in taking care of the old patients. They relate more to the patient's caregivers who are usually at home. The old patients cannot always be taken care of while at the hospital. This is because there would be a high cost incurred in their long stay at the hospital. Most of them usually have a terminal illness which requires constant and good care. Due to cost implications, they have no option but to receive care while at home. A consultation n between the geriatric manager and their family would lead to the realization of the best care plan. The main role of this nursing manager would be the supervision of the recruitment process for the home caregiver for the old patients. Such persons must be highly experienced in dealing with the aged and have good knowledge and experience about the caregiving process (Cherry & Jacob, 2016).

Importance of nurse managers

Communication

The nurse manager has a duty to be excellent communicators such that they would not only talk to patients but also listen to understand their feelings and wants. The communication ability to communicate properly is a skill that nurse managers should ensure that is cultivated by all the nurses under their jurisdiction. Through communication, the nurses would be able to connect more with the patients thus achieve their objective which is to influence change in the life of patients. The skills of communication prove useful when the nurse managers represent another nurse in hospitals functions and in t...