Nursing is a unique job; thus, it requires a unique set of skills. It also isn't the easiest job, sometimes requiring you to work long shifts and care for patients when they're at their lowest. This requires a decent level of resilience and devotion to others, which is at the centre of many nurses' values. This is why many believe that nursing is a calling.
Usually, the people who aspire to be nurses are kind, compassionate, empathetic, and patient—not to mention they're also great with people. Some are also natural-born leaders who can effectively provide vision and have the ability to manage others with ease. However, not everyone has the privilege of having these skills come naturally; some have to develop and strengthen them like a muscle.
In this article, we will cover the core leadership skills you need as a nurse to excel in a leadership or managerial role.
Core Nursing Leadership Skills
The role of a nurse can be quite complex at times. Thus, they need to be able to engage in a wealth of skills to help them navigate different situations they might face. For instance, an emergency might occur where multiple patients are brought in, and to deal with it, nurses must communicate effectively and act quickly to save lives. With that in mind, here are some core leadership skills that you'll need in the field of nursing:
1. Adaptability
First and foremost, nursing can be extremely fast-paced and demanding, so you need to be able to adapt to the situation quickly. Your nursing degree will equip you with all the methods and techniques you need to perform different procedures, but implementing your knowledge under pressure requires the ability to adapt.
2. Good communication
Learning how to communicate clearly and effectively is another essential leadership skill that nurses need. It's arguably one of the most important skills nurses must learn, period. If you think about it, communication is central to what they do. Effective patient care requires nurses to communicate with one another about treatments and patients' needs and communicate with other departments. Consider the impact of nurses not communicating clearly with one another. Bad communication opens the door to avoidable mistakes, mistakes that could be to the detriment of your patients.
3. Excellent teamwork skills
Nurses work together as a part of a team. When team members struggle to work together, the whole department suffers, and as a result, the quality of healthcare you give to your patients suffers as well. To avoid this, you need to be able to work well within the context of a team. In addition to this, as a leader, you need to cultivate teamwork among your colleagues as well. This means you need to be able to encourage staff to work well together, mediate disputes, and give them a common goal to strive towards.
4. Problem-solving skills
As a nurse, you're going to be faced with complicated decisions that are often multi-faceted. At times, these decisions also have potentially dire consequences if you make the wrong one or take too long. This can make the job feel heavy and overwhelming if you're not prepared for it.
This is why, as a nurse leader, you need to have your decision-making and critical thinking skills on point to ensure that when these tough decisions come up, you're able to navigate them effectively, providing a solution that benefits the whole system. Something that might help you with this is doing a nursing informatics course. Medical systems these days have used informatic systems to record and access their data. Knowing how these work will help you effectively lead and solve situations when they arise.
5. High emotional intelligence
We've often said that empathy and compassion is the nurse's superpower. As a leader, having a decent level of emotional intelligence is needed, especially since you're dealing with people from all different backgrounds. Having the ability to understand how a person feels and make decisions that factor this in but aren't reliant on it are great skills to have for leaders. It ensures that you're making decisions with the patient's best interest in mind and allows you to empathise with what they're going through.
6. You might need to advocate for change.
Having the strength of character to bring change in the workplace takes a variety of skills. One of which is advocacy. As a nurse, you'll have to deal with multiple factors; for example, your department might have financial constraints, insurance, or standard protocols that you need to meet or work with to do your job. At times, the tools you're given might not be sufficient to provide the kind of care you aspire to give. As a result, the only thing you can do is to try to advocate for more.
The Impact Nursing Leaders Have on the Medical Industry
Leaders will always have an impact on others; whether it be negative or positive, they can't help it. In fact, this kind of influence is often why they're leaders in the first place. That said, the way a person leads can often dictate the environment in which they lead. This means that how they interact and manage other staff can either increase job satisfaction and productivity or it can reduce it, making employees upset and resent their work.
As a leader in the nursing world, your job would be to ensure your nurses are cared for and that the patients are cared for as well. This means that you're responsible for assigning tasks to the nursing staff, ensuring that they're completed correctly, and keeping track of your nursing team's job satisfaction and fatigue levels to ensure they're able to give the best care possible.
If your nurses are satisfied and cared for, they'll return the treatment you've given them to the patients they care for. Creating a cycle of care for patients that is always of a higher quality. It all starts at the top with the leadership.
Final Thoughts
Developing these skills will be like strengthening a muscle. You'll have to work on it often to make it become a habit. But, when you've developed them, they'll set you up to lead well as a nurse and will help you tackle the multi-faceted, fast-paced nature of nursing with ease.
