simple ppt

1. Empowering Nursing leaders
JOHNY WILBERT, M.SC[N]
LECTURER,
APOLLO INSTITUTE OF HOSPITAL
MANAGEMENT AND ALLIED SCIENCE

2. It's tough trying to keep your feet on the ground, your head
above the clouds, your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to
the wheel, your finger on the pulse, your eye on the ball and your
ear to the ground…this is what we seem to be asking our nurse
managers, at all levels, to do”
- Rosemary Kennedy (2008)
Ref: Journal of Nursing Management 16 ( 8) 942-945

3. Introduction
• The charge nurse’s role is a difficult position
that requires preparation.
• Organizations need to invest in the leadership
development of the charge nurse as it is linked
with patient safety and healthy work
environments.

4. Empowerment
It is defined as the ability to get things done and
includes a capacity to mobilize resources and to
provide support, opportunity, and information.
A leader must have a sense of empowerment in
order to empower others.
Employee empowerment: (components)
• Organizational empowerment
• Psychological empowerment

5. Organizational empowerment
( Acc. to Kanter)
• Ability to advance in a current role or the
opportunity to be involved in activities beyond
the current scope of practice.
• Access to information to fulfill role expectations
and understand proper source from which to
obtain correct information (Ex: Drug formulary)
• Knowledge of job expectations and support in
fulfilling them
• Ability to obtain resources required to accomplish
tasks.

6. Psychological empowerment
• It is a motivational state that is based on self-
efficacy.
-Conger and Kanungo
• It is the emotional investment that a staff
requires to be successful.

7. CN & NO Responsibilities
CNs and Nos are the frontline leaders for nursing staff, who make up the
middle layer of leadership between nursing administration and staff nurses.
• Communication with staff, patients, and members of the interdisciplinary
health care team.
• Hiring and firing of staff
• Judging competency of staff (skill matrix).
• Assuming budgetary responsibility
• Overall responsibility for the delivery of safe, high-quality patient care.
• High patient satisfaction rates
• Positive patient outcomes
• Implementing policy changes by regulatory agencies, such as state health
departments, NABH and the Joint Commission.
• Reporting to the Nursing Director, DNS & ANS

8. Why do we need to be empowered?
If a charge nurse does not feel empowered, s/he
cannot be expected to create conditions that will
empower others.

9. Barriers for empowerment
• We always train new charge nurses on the unit
level.
• The information they receive is what is passed
down from one charge nurse to another.
• It is an intimate and personalized approach, but
it is also seriously limited.
• Less experience in a leadership role may have
more difficulty feeling empowered

10. If not empowered ????
• Charge nurses may rely too heavily on top
administration level.
• Will avoid crucial conversations in their units.
• Decisions will be made without considering
their impact on the hospital as a whole.

11. How to empower charge nurses?
• Charge nurses’ orientation program.
– Incorporate ideas and perspectives from across the
organization for truly collaborative training and
mentoring program (sessions by senior leaders in
administration, finance, human resources, staff
development and patient experience departments (a
multidisciplinary team).
– This would allow our new leaders to see beyond the
unit, to understand our health system from a global
perspective.

12. Lessons needed
1) Teach the true costs of labor (fiscal responsibility)
– New ways to rearrange patient assignments.
– Evaluate close observation patients.
– Readjust staffing to work more efficiently.
– Actively seek to improve the transfer process and
decrease “dead bed” time.
– When own unit has less census can call charge nurses
on other units and offer up the staff resources than
asking nurses to perform double shift.
– Charge nurses need to collaborate for the good of the
whole hospital instead of just focusing on their unit.

13. Lessons needed ……
2) Help charge nurses truly take charge
– Charge nurses need to be taught to handle difficult
conversations with staff and hold them accountable
for their performance.
– When we’re afraid to speak up, bad things happen,
and, ultimately, the patient suffers.

14. Lessons needed ….
3) Charge nurses leading the way
– Comprehend the financial consequences of staffing
decisions.
– Gain the authority to take corrective action right on the
unit.
• Need to handle low-level staff corrective actions
immediately instead of pushing every issue up to their
managers. Avoid the attitude “wait-till-your-father-gets-
home” approach
– Learn to communicate effectively.
– Understand how nurses are graded in patient
satisfaction surveys.

15. Lessons needed ….
4) Make the shift from me to we.
– Routinely work together to solve problems

16. Lessons needed ….
5) Tactful communication:
– Allow for open and respectful communication, which
can result in trust.
– The most important aspect of communication is
listening.
– Need to possess assertive communication skill
• Assertiveness is an acquired process that stems from
maturation in a role, experience and self-confidence in one's
knowledge and abilities.
• Assertive style of communication takes into account the
rights of others and incorporates direct eye contact,
spontaneous verbal expressions, appropriate facial
expressions, confidence and speaking in a well-modulated
tone.

17. Lessons needed ….
6) Conflict Resolution:
Nurses traditionally take a passive approach to conflict
management.
Barriers:
• Fear of making matters worse.
Strategies to resolve conflict:
• Recognize the conflict and address it early.
• Be proactive.
• Be an active listener.
• Remain calm.
• Seek a solution or a compromise (i.e)good for both parties.

18. Lessons needed ….
7) Delegation: It is the process of assigning others responsibility
and authority. The role of the charge nurse takes on the highest
form of delegation in nursing. Charge nurse must ensure that staff
members complete the tasks assigned to them.
Advantages:
– The unit can function in a more efficient and effective manner
– Can help employees in developing their own skills.
– Charge nurses are still held accountable for their decisions and the tasks
they delegate.
Requirements of delegation:
• Clear description of the task
• The responsibilities and authority associated with the task.
• Time limits
• Expected outcomes or goals.

19. Lessons needed ….
8) Leadership
Charge nurses must possess transformational
leadership, which means they commit people to
action, and convert followers to leaders and leaders
into change agents.
Five aspects of transformational leadership
(Kouzes and Posner )
– Challenge the process
– Inspire a shared vision
– Enable others to act
– Model the way
– Encourage the heart

20. Lessons needed ….
• Servant leadership: Hunter defines true
leadership not as power but authority based on
relationships, love, service and sacrifice by
strengthening the bonds of respect,
responsibility and caring for those you lead

21. Lessons needed ….
9) Emotional intelligence:
It is the process that influences one's ability to respond to
others while managing one's own feelings.
• Charge nurses need to have a high degree of Emotional
intelligence. It is more important than IQ.
• Emotional intelligence is self-awareness, self-regulation,
motivation, empathy and social skills.
• Emotional intelligence creates a positive and productive
work environment.

22. Emotional intelligence

23. Further lessons to be learnt
• Managing Self & Critical Reflection
• All newly-empowered individuals will also require support
from senior managers as it is inevitable that errors or mistakes
in meeting their newly-acquired responsibilities may occur.

24. Conclusion
Our charge nurses and nursing supervisors need
to collaborate for the good of the whole hospital
instead of just focusing on their unit.