Response Post to Forum: you will also respond in each of the discussion forum to post made by a peer (s). Your response post has a word limit of 100 words (+/- 10%).
Post 1: Clinical leadership is not an important consideration to a graduate RN. It is more important to increase my confidence and improve my clinical skills to be a competent clinician.
Clinical Leadership, in nursing, has been reviewed as a way of developing skills and capabilities required to achieve positive clinical outcomes while working with people in a varied circumstance (Huber, 2014). On the other hand, Stanley and Stanley (2018) has mentioned that clinical leaders are not determined because of their job title or position of power, they can be encountered in any clinical services. Moreover, they are involved in providing direct patient care through effective communication skills and sound clinical knowledge. In my reflection, I believe that nursing is a profession whose core mission is to provide nursing care to the people in their health and sickness. Thus, I believe clinical leadership is important for a graduate nurse to inspire them to become more visible in practice, think critically to identify problems and use their values and beliefs to provide high-quality and effective patient care (Stanley & Stanley, 2018).
Post 2 Autonomy and accountability are inherent to nursing as a profession. How do these professional expectations related to leadership qualities enable the RNs practice?
Clinical leader not only improves patient outcomes, but also enhance staff knowledge and skills by creating positive environment that empowers and upholds staff confidence (Sfantou et al., 2017). Autonomy means having the authority to make decisions. Nurses are expected to perform autonomous practice. One of the key qualities of a leadership may include being supportive where they encourage and inspire the nurses to work independently and make clinical decisions within their scope of practice, as well as remain accountable for their actions, behaviors and decisions (Stanley, 2017). The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia [NMBA] (2016) states that nurses think critically and use the best evidence prior to making decisions. Hence, nurses must be clinically competent and use critical thinking skills to provide evidence-based nursing care to the patients. Further, they accept accountability for any possible consequences arise from their actions or be able to provide rationale, if need to.
Post 3 What elements enable and enhance positive change and innovation in the health care environment, should I be contributing to as a graduate RN?
Innovation is about adopting new ways of working. Changes in health care is necessary for the innovation to take place. Cusson, Meehan, Bourgault and Kelley (2020) states, it requires knowledge, skills and attitudes to identify problems, address health care needs and form creative ideas in order to initiate change and innovation in health care delivery. Further, Barrow, Annamaraju and Toney-Butler (2020) mentioned an environment that favors critical thinking and encourages new behaviors through staff engagement and provision of resources and training to overcome knowledge deficit foster changes and innovation. Registered Nurses are the frontline healthcare workers. These nurses bring a unique context as innovators as they inspire positive influence on improving patient outcomes (Cusson et al., 2020). Hence, being a graduate nurse, I believe critical thinking ability and positive attitude towards improvement in patient safety and quality care can contribute to changes in care delivery approach for patients.
