Assignment Task: Nursing Leadership and Management
Discussion Topic:
Case Scenario:
Journey Toward American Nurses Credentialing Center's Magnet Recognition Program®
Situation:
One organization's journey to achieve ANCC's Magnet Recognition Program included a strategic plan for nurse leaders to engage nurses at all levels in establishing one nursing professional practice model (PPM) across a seven-hospital system (Holskey & Rivera, 2020). A PPM "describes how nurses practice, collaborate, communicate, and develop professionally to provide high quality care" (Holskey & Rivera, 2020, p. 468). With over 7,000 nurses across multiple hospitals that comprised the organization, nurse leaders needed to be transformational. Although there are tools available to help nurses identify and make complex decisions on the road to formulating a system perspective for a PPM, many tools and processes are not effective in achieving goals and are less efficient, potentially wasting financial and people resources.
Approach:
As defined by ANCC (2017), transformational leaders motivate and inspire others to achieve outcomes and simultaneously build their leadership capacity. In this initiative, nurse leaders transformed the structures and processes for learning and practicing nursing by breaking down siloes and incorporating effective strategies for engaging nurses that were inclusive and empowering. Nurse leaders examined the evidence and identified liberating structures (LSs) by Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2014) as innovative engagement strategies. LSs are creative activities that can be used with large groups to share individual perspectives on the road to identifying system perspectives. Initially, nurse experts educated nurses about the value and expectations for a system PPM that represented all levels of nurses in all practice settings. They disseminated examples of PPMs from other organizations, introduced PPM definitions and language, and discussed evidence about the relationship of PPM for driving exemplary professional practice. After providing nurses with knowledge and evidence, the nurse experts inspired nurses to share their ideas, as they were exposed to diverse perspectives of their colleagues working in different units, specialties, and hospitals. The visionary nurse leaders reinforced the shared goals of everyone-achieving excellence for patient-centered care. As LSs were leveraged to assist in identifying and prioritizing elements of a PPM, nurse leaders collaborated with clinical nurses as they considered best practices for communicating and coordinating feedback from nurses who were members of interprofessional teams.
Outcome:
The structures and processes for learning and decision-making empowered nurses to share their voices and energized collaboration. Clinical nurses advocated for patients, themselves, and their profession as they were coached by nurse leaders to achieve a system perspective and consensus efficiently. The organization's nurses designed a PPM which was adopted across the system as a guide for excellence in patient-centered care. Overall, nurses at all levels established a successful environment conducive to systems thinking and stimulating new knowledge, innovations, and improvements for achieving organizational goals and outcomes.
Discussion Questions:
Q1. After reviewing the AONL competencies, identify two nurse executive competencies demonstrated in this case scenario and give an example of their actions that demonstrate each competency. What role would nurse managers have in this case scenario?
Q2. Name two of the nurse competencies that you feel are essential to nursing leadership particularly now that we are emerging from a post-COVID era environment and how these nursing leadership skills will be applied in this new era.
Q3. What are the four key phases for developing a successful strategic plan? What are some best practices for strategic planning and development? What nurse leader strengths and competencies position nurse executives and nurse managers as essential to strategic planning and development?
As a reminder, all discussion posts must be a minimum of 350 words initial and references must be cited in APA format 7th Edition, and must include a minimum of 2 scholarly resources published within the past 5 years.