Nurse Administrator Interaction
It is possible to learn from one's own experiences about best practices. By looking at our interactions with others, we can identify behaviors that work and those that do not, through the process of reflection. When I think about my previous work environments, and the experiences that I have had with nurse administrators, there is opportunity for reflection there, both on good behaviors and bad.
The Good
A good practice environment has the following components. The nurse administrator needs to build trust with the team, and trust with the other internal stakeholders in the organization, in order to maximize effectiveness (Newhouse & Mills, 2002). There are a number of behaviors that can help to build trust. Communication is perhaps the most important. People need to know in their day-to-day activities what is expected of them, what they will be evaluated on, and where they stand with respect to their duties. I feel that teaching is also a great trust-building behavior, because it shows a willingness to work with someone in order to make them better, and by extension the entire team better. The nursing administrator definitely needs to be open and available in order to create a positive working environment, and that is something that goes along with trust.
It is important for a nursing administrator to also demonstrate that people within the team are going to be evaluated on their merits. This is critical -- people need to know that their hard work will be noticed and rewarded, and will not work as hard when they sense that there is no point to doing that. Further, another
On the former, it is important that nurses not only work together with each other, but as part of an overall health care team. But they are not robots, and it is necessary that a nurse administrator recognizes the human side of the staff, in order to provide accommodation and flexibility where needed. The workforce will be a lot more positive and dedicated, creating a win-win situation, under such conditions.
The Bad
There are also behaviors that do not create a good practice environment. For starters, the opposite of the above will almost always contribute to a bad practice environment. When people do not have a sense of belonging to a team, when they have no communication from management, or when they only hear from management when they make a mistake, these are the types of situations that work against creating a positive practice environment. So a nurse administrator should not be closed off, closed-minded, unapproachable, unresponsive and they should not have any sort of favoritism in how they run things, as all of this runs counter to creating a positive work environment.
There are other behaviors as well that can create a negative…
