Ethical leadership and nurse mentoring as SMART goals in nursing practice

Collaborative Nursing

The two SMART goals chosen for this assignment are Ethical Leadership in nursing and Nurse Mentoring. These SMART goals are both vitally important to the nurse in any context, because healthcare situations demand ethical approaches and mentoring is always a valuable component of nursing practice. As to Nurse Mentoring, this is a process that should not be limited to recent graduates of nursing schools but in fact should be conducted throughout a nurse's career as new procedures and technologies are introduced to the field of nurse care.

Ethical Leadership

Ethics is a term that is used often in business and other genres. It is used so often that perhaps in some cases it becomes watered down. But in any healthcare environment the need for wholly ethical practices by nurses -- and all healthcare professionals -- is absolutely vital. This society is weary from news of ethical breakdowns in government and business, so the nursing field must be absolutely committed to providing ethical leadership.

Peer-Reviewed Article: In a scholarly article in the journal Nursing Ethics the authors point out that while ethical leadership is "…critical to enhancing ethical healthcare practice," many nurses do not feel that they have the support of their supervisors and other key leaders (Storch, et al., 2013). The problem is related to the fact that ethical leadership just isn't discussed or evaluated as often as perhaps it should. In this peer-reviewed piece, the authors researched articles on ethical leadership in Nursing Ethics and found that there were only twelve articles specific to ethical leadership over a twenty-year period (Storch, 152). That translates to less than one article on ethical leadership in Nursing Ethics each year since 1996.

Credible Website: In the Website titled "Reflections on Nursing Leadership" (published by Sigma Theta Tau International) the publishers offer research on a myriad of healthcare and nursing issues. The article on the home page ("Helping nurses make ethical decisions") is by Tesfamicael Ghebrehiwet (RN / PHD at the International Council of Nurses). He points to the fact that nurses "…daily fact ethical dilemmas related to life and death" and hence nurses must fully understand their code of ethics and apply those best practices every hour of every day.

Informational Expert: The person interviewed for this assignment is an RN at maximum-security psychiatric state hospital. Her name is Eileen, and she has worked at this facility for 8 years. Asked about ethical leadership among the nursing staff, she said:

"Ethics is on the minds of every nurse in the building, because we are serving mentally ill inmates, mentally disordered offenders, and some of our patients are here because they were found incompetent to stand trial. Still others have been found not guilty by reason of insanity, so you get a clear picture of who we are dealing with." Has she seen unethical practices? "When a violent patient threatens a staff member or nurse, it is totally ethical to subdue that person without harming him, if possible. And yet, sometimes when a nurse is threatened or actually attacked by an inmate, there is the natural urge to retaliate. Still, we have a code of ethics and when a nurse violates that code there are repercussions from our supervisors."

Do Eileen's superiors teach or demonstrate ethical leadership? "Yes, we have bi-monthly classes on ethical leadership that each nurse is expected to demonstrate. The classes are mandatory and the state brings in expert consultants to instruct and update us on ethical issues in an institution like ours."

Summary

The SMART goals in this paper -- ethical leadership and nurse mentoring -- have been explained and through the peer-reviewed articles presented, solid, helpful information has been provided. According to the Storch article, ethics is not sufficiently emphasized in the literature and moreover, some nurses feel that they do not have the support of their superiors in terms of ethical leadership and behavior. And in the mentoring article, along with the acute shortage of nurses, it is reported that there are many nurses who will not stay in the industry because they are not stimulated and they apparently have a "diminished sense of value" in the field. Mentoring could and should remedy that situation.