Discussion Board Post for Leadership in Healthcare Course

February 3, 2023

Prompt:

Leadership and management are important aspects of healthcare that ultimately impact patient
outcomes. While many nurses believe that leadership is something that is not needed for the
"average" bedside nurse - this module contains information that supports the opposite. Now
that you have completed the module 1 readings and video, you have had the opportunity to
consider your own ideas and opinions about leadership in nursing as well as evaluate your own
leadership.
For this assignment you will participate in a discussion of "everyday" leadership and
management.

 Look for examples that you have witnessed or demonstrated yourself while at work.
 Literature support is required and you will use your text, readings from this module, plus
other external literature to support or oppose your posts. Include citations for the
literature used in your statements and a reference at the bottom of your post.

Response

Reviewing this module's collections of readings has expanded my ideas of what

leadership can look like in the nursing profession. Similar to the majority of nurses surveyed in a
qualitative study (Booher et al., 2021), I too yoked nurse leadership with a formal leadership
title. To me, it is liberating, exciting, and frankly a little unmooring to consider the many
everyday leadership examples I may have witnessed and committed in the course of my
practice.
The first example of everyday nursing leadership that comes to mind is the memory that
inspired me to become a nurse. It was September 2018 and my friends were throwing me a
bachelorette party in Asheville, North Carolina. While we were hiking, I had the misfortune of
being bit by a copperhead snake. In my ignorance, I started hiking as fast as I could in what I
thought was the direction of our cabin. I did not know that I was the facilitating circulation of
the venom through my bloodstream. By the time we got the VA (the closest medical facility),
my right ankle had swelled the size of grapefruit. Having insufficient experience with my
condition, they let me go 90 minutes later with very little further instruction. Several hours
later, the swelling and pain were worsening and traveling up towards my heart. I knew I needed
emergency treatment. When I went back to the VA, a doctor swooped into my room and
without any preamble said, "You need the anti-venom right now. If you don't get it, you will
probably lose your leg." After staying strong for my friends all day, his words dissolved me to
uncontrollable sobs. Fortunately, a nurse quickly came to my side. She comforted me, and
when I was a little calmer, recommended a nearby hospital that would be able to treat me. She
assured me that they had always taken outstanding care of her own children when they were
sick, and she was confident they would be effective as assuming the next stages of my care.
Words are meager to express the gratitude I feel to this nurse, who helped to transform what
moments before had seemed a hopeless case into a manageable, hopeful situation with clear
next steps. I don't even remember her name, but she inspired me to pay it forward by
becoming a nurse myself. Like her, I wanted to be a thought leader, a transformational leader, a
nurse who could give others what Drew Dudley calls a "lollypop moment" (a moment when
someone said or did something that made your life fundamentally better; Dudley, 2010).
Looking back at my own galling and transformative patient experience, I did not
recognize in that moment that my nurse was demonstrating leadership, but she most certainly
was. She was influencing me in ways that not only improved the outlook for my health
outcomes (thanks to her, I was able to dance at my wedding four weeks later), but she
impacted the direction of my career.
If I failed to see leadership qualities in the nurse that I all but deified, how many times
have I overlooked leadership I have enacted or witnessed in fellow nurses? This module
challenges me to perceive nursing leadership that is constantly occurring. One example in my
own practice was last week when I volunteered to allow a nurse shadowing on our unit to
practice IV insertion on me. I demonstrated initiative at my own personal risk in order to
provide a learning opportunity for a fellow nurse so that she could use that experience to
enhance her practice. I don't know if this stimulated a lollypop moment for her, but I hope that
at least one thing I do as a nurse will inspire or enhance someone's wellbeing.
While it is empowering to recognize that I can practice everyday leadership as a nurse
even at the sunrise of my career, my research validates that nurses recognized by their peers as
leaders tend to be seasoned professionals (Douglas Lawson et al., 2019). Still, this is something
that I want to aim for because according to Douglas Lawson and colleagues (2019), being an
informal nurse leader is correlated with higher levels of job satisfaction. Though this study did
not produce sufficient evidence that informal leaders necessarily cause higher levels of patient
satisfaction, I recognize from my own lollypop moment with a snake-bit ankle that by
exemplifying the core characteristics of nursing, nurses are leaders every day.
 References
Booher, L., Yates, E., Claus, S., Haight, K., & Burchill, C.N. (2021). Leadership self-perception of
clinical nurses at the bedside: A qualitative descriptive study. J Clin Nurs. 30, 1573–1583.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15705Links to an external site.
Douglas Lawson, T., Tecson, K. M., Shaver, C. N., Barnes, S. A., & Kavli, S. (2019). The impact of
informal leader nurses on patient satisfaction. Journal of nursing management, 27(1),
103-108.
Dudley, D. (2010). Everyday leadership [Video]. TED Conferences.
https://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership Links to an external site.