ANALYZING A NURSE LEADER1
Analyzing a Nurse Leader
Kathryn Kaufman, Corrin Simon, and Jacqueline Mulder
Ferris State University
Analyzing a Nurse Leader
The purpose of this assignment is to “interview any manager or leader within a healthcare organization” (Bishop, 2014, p. 12). Throughout this paper, the responsibilities and job details of nurse manager Erin Griffes are outlined. Erin is the clinical support nurse in the Mecosta County emergency room (ER); she has a bachelor’s degree in nursing and is currently working on her master’s degree through Ferris State’s online master’s of nursing program. Erin holds a trauma certification, a legal nurse consultant degree, and is a clinical instructor for Ferris State. She has experience as a charge nurse and hospital supervisor, and has worked as a registered nurse for 18 years.
Job Duties
The day-to-day duties of a Erin’s job as clinical support for the ER includes a variety of responsibilities. Erin reviews staffing and scheduling, making sure all shifts are covered with the proper number of nurses. She assesses the need for more staff, and also sends ER staff to other units if the other units are busy. A part of staffing includes coordinating orientation for new nurses, and deciding when orientation is completed.
Erin is able to help manage when the ER is busy, revealing that the most important aspect of her job is to make sure everything runs smoothly. Erin is able to step in if there is a crisis, and she describes this part of her job as “putting out little fires” all day. She is willing to step in and help with patient care if need be, and even picks up extra shifts as a staff nurse.
Erin attends management meetings, and works with other hospital departments to coordinate patient admits. She also ensures the continuing education of the staff. She keeps staff up-to-date on changing practice, informing nurses of the best evidence-based practice. Erin has two separate bosses. She reports to the ER director, and also to the director of nursing. All of the ER staff report to her, so she falls in the middle of the organizational chart.
Erin’s job is also very important in terms of providing both physical and emotional support to the ER nurses. Erin is a contact person for the nurses if they are dealing with any issue, and she listens and discusses the issue with the nurse. A study that was performed rated the compassion satisfaction, burnout, and compassion fatigue among ER nurses. Eighty-two percent of ER nurses reported experiencing burnout, and 86 percent had experienced compassion fatigue (Hooper et al., 2010). As evidenced by this study, compassion fatigue and burnout are huge issues among ER nurses. A positive support system at work may be able to alleviate and possibly even prevent some of these negative staff outcomes.
Collaboration
Erin collaborates with the director of nursing, and the ER director and clinical support managers in other areas of the hospital. As mentioned in the previous section, Erin attends management meetings with managers from all floors. She is able to discuss staffing needs and surpluses with other managers. These meetings are positive for the managers and the hospital as a whole, because they are able to see the bigger picture. These meetings are also highly effective in coordinating patient admits, because the managers are able to assess the best floor for each individual patient in terms of patient needs and floor resources.
Staffing needs are another item of discussion at the meetings. Erin will often float ER nurses to other floors on the hospital, such as the critical care unit or the medical-surgical floors. She is also able to notify other nurse managers if there is a shift in the ER with a shortage of nurses. The nurse managers are typically able to provide nurses to fill in the gaps.
Legal and Ethical Issues
As clinical support, Erin must deal with both legal and ethical issues that pertain to the patients and staff within the emergency room. An example of something she needs to manage is a situation she had recently. A nineteen year old came into the E.R. intoxicated. The nurse caring for this patient filled out a form for Child Services. According to the Department of Human Services (2014) a child must be “under 18 years of age” (para. 2) to be reported. This was an issue for Erin because the patient was nineteen years of age and no longer a minor. After taking time to discuss it with her superiors and contacting Child Protective Services, Erin decided that the nurse was ok in reporting the patient because she was advocating for the patient’s safety.
Power and Influence
For Erin, working in the E.R. means having a quick mind. She tends to be more to the point with her staff because the E.R. needs to run quickly and effectively. If she was lax about things going on, it could result in harm and even legal issues. Also, the nurses working under her have a tendency to be “pushy” because of their environment and experience. This results in Erin needing to be extremely confident and refusing to back down. Her years of experience help with this aspect because the nurses respect her and her knowledge base.
Decision-Making and Problem-Solving
As a nurse working in the ER, Erin has to be able to make quick decisions, sometimes between life and death. Now working in a managerial role, she still needs to make decisions, but more focused on the staff as a whole instead of so much being centered on patient care. For a manager, the employees are one of the main concerns, and ensuring their needs are met to provide safe and quality patient care is important. Also, in seeking to problem solve, Erin collaborates with other areas of the Spectrum Health system in larger communities to find new methods to implement into the smaller hospital campus where she works.
Resolution of Conflict
As working in an ER is a high stress job, there are often conflicts, either with members of the ER teams or with other employees. One of the ways Erin said that she has found to be the most effective in solving conflict is to “propel people to solving their own problems” (Griffes, 2014). This is not in an attempt to pass off any responsibility, but allows employees for some guidance and encouragement to take the initiative in conflict situations. It also further helps to develop a mindset for employees to develop resourcefulness in undertaking their own conflicts when possible.
Conclusion
Moving into the role of a nurse manager has, for Erin, had its ups and downs. “The hardest part”, she says, “is when you go from working with others as your peers, and then transition into a management role over them” (Griffes, 2014). Erin indicated that there are parts of being a manager that are very rewarding, such as being able to have some influence to affect change. There are ups and downs to any job, but for a manager some helpful traits are things like leadership, communication skills, and people skills. These aspects are helpful for any nurse, but their importance cannot be expressed enough for the role of a nurse manager.
References
Bishop, R. (2014). NURS 440 Syllabus.
Griffes, E. (2014). Nurse manager interview.
Hooper, C., Craig, J., Janvrin, D. R., Wetsel, M. A., & Reimels, E. (2010). Compassion satisfaction, burnout, and compassion fatigue among emergency nurses compared with nurses in other selected inpatient specialties. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 36(5), 420-427.
Department of Human Services (2014). Reporting abuse and neglect. Retrieved from