Nursing Leaders and Nursing

Diversity Management and Nursing Leadership Philosophy In the last two decades, influx of nursing professionals from the different part of the world into the United States has created a diversity work environment within the health organizations. The issue has made leaders facing challenges to manage the workforce that compose of professionals from different cultural background. To manage a diverse health environment effectively, a leader must develop a leadership philosophy that should be accepted by all workforce.

The transformation and transactional leaderships have been identified as the effective leadership styles to manage a diverse work environment to achieve organizational objectives. However, a leader needs to be culturally competent to develop a strategy to manage workers effectively. The study illustrates the challenges that nursing leaders in the Saudi Arabia hospitals face in the work environments since nursing staff in the region are composed of workers from different countries and different cultural background.

The study recommends that nursing leaders should enhance their greater understanding on Purnell model of cultural competence to manage their organizations effectively. Introduction A growing body of evidence in the nursing practice reveals that healthy working environments enhance staff satisfaction, improved patient outcomes, staff retention, and organizational performances. Health organizations that intend to establish a healthy work environment should put in place a strong nursing leadership practice at all level of organization, especially at the patient point-of-care.

With a recent change in the healthcare environment within the last two decades, the influx of immigrant nursing professionals into the United States has increased responsibilities for staffing, diversity management, and regulatory compliance. Faced with increased market competitions, and the aim to satisfy the needs all workers from different cultural background, healthcare organizations need effective nursing leaders to manage different cultural diversity challenges. Essentially, diversity management drives market growth and unlocks innovation. Organizations that manage workers' diversity effectively have been proved to enjoy innovation within the work environment.

(Hewlett, Marshall, & Sherbin, 2013). Despite the benefits that healthcare organizations stand to derive from the application of the diversity leadership management, it is still challenging for the contemporary nursing leaders to possess skills, knowledge, and abilities to manage organizations with diversity workforces. A leader must be able to strike a balance between practicing efficient business and providing compassionate care in the multicultural and diversity healthcare environment.

The objective of this study is to develop the "nursing leadership and diversity management philosophy" using the "Larry Purnell Model of Cultural Competence." The study also discusses my core values that include communication, integrity, and passion. Moreover, total quality management is my management philosophy. Nursing Leadership and Diversity Management Philosophy An advent of global economy and advances in technology have brought people from different part of the world closer together leading to a change in diversity workplace.

An increase in the diversity workforce has made nursing leaders to shoulder new responsibilities of managing the staff diversity to increase customer loyalty, retain and attract quality workforces. (Sherman, Pross, 2010). "Employees of firms with 2-D diversity are 45% likelier to report a growth in market share over the previous year and 70% likelier to report that the firm captured a new market." (Hewlett, Marshall, & Sherbin, 2013). A term leader is defined as the ability to influence others through interpersonal skills and effective communication. Avoka, Florence, Ofei, et al.

(2016) define leadership as the process or art of influencing people to achieve organizational goals. However, leadership involves different styles. A leader must demonstrate one of the effective leadership styles to drive up innovation and enhance quality health systems within the healthcare environment. Leadership styles displayed by nursing managers play a significant role in job satisfaction within the multicultural environment. Castle, & Decker, (2011) believe that DON (Director of Nursing) and NHA (Home Administrator) consist of the leadership team who influence the quality healthcare delivery within the multicultural health environment.

According to the authors, DONs have the ability to deliver better quality than Home Administrators. Avolio and Bass (1994) argue that the transformational leadership is one of the effective leadership styles in the diversity work environment. Transformational leadership styles encompass the inspirational motivation, individual consideration, idealized behavior, idealistic attributes and intellectual stimulation. However, transformational leadership behaviors must be reflected in nursing managers to create and communicate their culturally competent to the subordinates. A transformation leadership inspires the subordinates to achieve changes by raising awareness of workers at a higher level.

Avolio and Bass (1994) identify the transactional leadership as another important leadership style to manage diversity. The transactional leadership styles include management-by-exception, laissez-faire and contingent rewards. The transactional leadership motivates employees through punishment and rewards. In the United States, most nursing leaders incorporate the transformational leadership styles to manage cultural diversity. Despite the argument of the previous authors, Souher, & Shirley, (2014) argue that nursing leaders face challenges in managing the multi-cultural health environment.

The authors draw an example from the healthcare environment in the United Arab Emirate where nursing professionals from a different part of the world come to work in the region. The King Fahad Hospital is ranked as the largest hospital in Saudi Arabia. The nursing staff in the hospital compose of professionals from different countries from the UK, United States of America, Nigeria, Canada, India, Singapore and other countries.

The diversity of the nursing staff set new challenges for leaders to manage the cultural and communication understandings in order to deliver culturally competent care. Since an understanding of patients' symptoms depends on the cultural and logistic knowledge of staff, nursing leaders are faced with the responsibility of ensuring that effective cultural competent health care delivery is achieved. Cultural competent care is defined as the process in which nursing professionals strive to deliver quality care for clients within the cultural context.

However, achieving this goal is challenging because nearly all the nursing staff is expatriates where only a few of them are from the Arabic-speaking background. Thus, the issue creates a complex situation for the leaders who compose of non-Islamic speakers and require to implement the Western biomedical healthcare model within the culturally diverse population of Saudi healthcare settings. Sagar, (2012) proposes the "Larry Purnell Theory of Cultural Competence" (p 21) as the theory that enhances a greater understanding of the of the diversity and universality in the healthcare environment.

The Larry Purnell model was developed in 1991 to assist nursing staff in achieving cultural competence. The model shows a circle that consists of four rims: global society, family, community, and individual. Purnell also listed "four level cultural competence as unconsciously incompetent, unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent, and unconsciously incompetence." (Sagar, 2012 p 21). The model aims to provide the frameworks for the nursing leaders to promote cultural competency. Leaders in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada have used the Larry Purnell model to manage cultural diversity in the healthcare settings.

For example, the New Jersey hospital has used the cultural competent approach to enhance the competency of the nursing staff. A study is carried out by Sunil, Cheyney & Engle (2009) to determine the effectiveness of the cultural competence program to improve knowledge and skills of health providers and administrators practice in the transcultural clinical settings. The study selects 43 healthcare professionals for the four-hour training workshop, the results show that the cultural competence training program delivers a significant improvement of providers' knowledge on cultural competency.

As a leader in a diverse healthcare setting, my core values will include communication, integrity, and passion. Moreover, I will use the total quality management as.