Nurse Leaders & Effective Communication

Leaders emanate from several places in the health care system and play differing roles as opportunities in the industry require. Staff nurses are on the front lines at the bedside 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Staff nurses, thus, have a definite power to affect sustainable outcomes and efficiency. They are, indeed, at the initial stage of decision-making. By permitting some autonomy in their decision-making however slight, lays the foundation of leadership.

Today’s Nurse Leaders

• New leadership characteristics and roles is the requirement for the constantly changing health care system. Technological knowledge is changing the traditional leadership hierarchy. Contemporary nurses choose the proper times to call a physician, decide on appropriate care plans and appropriate interventions. These initial steps of autonomy create the foundation of leadership. By assessing their decision with similar patient outcomes, successful training is effected. Managers can cultivate employee self-direction rather than giving guidance, thereby inspiring leadership from the bottom up. Again, these straightforward steps assist contemporary nurses in developing their own leadership abilities.

Definition of Effective Communication

• Effective communication is a reciprocal process. Transmitting the right message to the other person, who correctly receives and understand the said message. Communication is effective when you comprehend how the people you are working together with may construe your message. People acquire information through all of their faculties. Therefore, communication should contain features of visual, audio and body language to appeal to all listeners.

Benefits of Effective Communication

• Effective communication depends on our realization of the diversity of the staff and their perception of the world, and uses this knowledge to direct our interaction with others. Effective communication permits nurse leaders to accomplish mutual understanding, guide the circulation of information, assist the staff to surmount impediments to frank discussions, motivate others to start achieving organizational goals and direct information to inspire people to new ways of thinking and to work efficiently effectively.

Effective Communication in Health Care

• The positive influence of effective communication on healthy work environments, on employee job satisfaction, staff retention, better patient outcomes and organizational performance is increasingly evident in the nursing literature. With effective communication, nurse leaders can facilitate at the unit level the creation of an extremely gratifying organizational culture, by involving staff in developing shared values in their work. A transformational leadership style wherein leaders use effective communication to increase the motivation, morale and performance of their staff members versus the usual command and control staff supervision style will aid in accomplishing this paradigm shift.

Nurse Leaders and Use of Effective Communication

• Nurse leadership entails skillfully handling relationships with team members and affecting their behaviors. Emerging nurse leaders face a major leadership challenge in guiding their staff to deal with everyday problems, misunderstandings and communication concerns and move toward the objective of functioning as a highly effective work teams. Nonetheless, this challenge must be met because of the interdisciplinary nature of high quality patient care needed in health care environments. Communicating effectively is where team trust starts developing. Further, up and coming nurse leaders must be shown that relationships exist within the framework of conversations that workers have, or don’t have, with one another. Exceptional communication is a required basic skill to successfully lead others.