Scope, Standards & Traits of Effective Nurse Administrators
This paper examines the scope and standards of practice for nurse administrators, drawing primarily on the American Nurses Association's competency-based framework and supplementary certifying board standards. It reviews characteristics that distinguish effective nurse administrators — including evidence-based practice, people skills, task orientation, and time management — based on interviews with two practicing administrators and supporting literature. The paper concludes with a personal self-assessment that identifies two professional strengths (commitment to quality care and ambition for leadership advancement) and two areas for growth (reluctance to challenge authority and time management difficulties), along with reflections on the importance of ongoing self-evaluation in nursing administration.
- Introduction: Overview of nurse administrator roles and paper scope
- Scope and Standards of Nurse Administrators: ANA competency framework and evidence-based practice standards
- Characteristics of an Effective Nurse Administrator: Interview findings and literature on administrator traits
- Individual Self-Assessment: Personal strengths, weaknesses, and leadership aspirations
- Summary: Key findings and two reflective learning insights
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds its claims in a named, authoritative framework — the ANA's Nursing Administration: Scope and Standards of Practice — giving the argument a credible professional anchor throughout.
- Balances external literature with primary data: two firsthand interviews with practicing nurse administrators provide concrete, experiential evidence that complements the scholarly citations.
- The personal self-assessment section models intellectual honesty by naming specific, actionable weaknesses alongside strengths, avoiding the generic platitudes common in reflective nursing papers.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates triangulation of evidence — combining professional standards documents, peer-reviewed survey data (Kalb & O'Connor-Von, 2015), practitioner interviews, and personal reflection. This layered approach strengthens each claim by showing it is supported from multiple independent sources rather than any single authority.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a clear five-part structure: an introduction that maps the paper's scope; a standards and scope section grounded in ANA competencies; a characteristics section that synthesizes interview data with published literature; a candid individual self-assessment; and a concise summary that restates key findings and identifies two learning insights. Each section builds logically on the previous one, moving from professional-level standards down to personal-level application.
Introduction
Today, nurse administrators are playing an increasingly important role in a wide range of healthcare settings, and there has been a corresponding increase in interest in understanding the relevant competencies, scope, and standards of practice for this profession. To this end, this paper reviews the relevant literature to identify the scope and standards for nursing administrators, followed by a description of the profession's general characteristics. A summary of the research, together with two insights gained from this study, concludes the paper.
Scope and Standards of Nurse Administrators
Although every nurse administrator position is unique in some respects, all typically follow the 17 competency-based standards of practice set forth in the American Nurses Association's (ANA) text, Nursing Administration: Scope and Standards of Practice (2nd ed.), as well as relevant standards promulgated by nursing administrator certifying boards and accrediting organizations such as the Joint Commission. Although these 17 competency-based standards are extensive, they are not exhaustive, and nurse administrators draw upon additional sources as well.
Based on these nursing resources, together with empirical observations and discussions with experienced nursing administrators, one overarching theme that emerges is the need for nurse administrators to apply evidence-based standards of practice. This point is reinforced by Kalb and O'Connor-Von (2015), who note, "Standards from other professional organizations stress the use of evidence in nursing and health care. These include the ANA's Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice; Quality and Safety Education for Nurses from the QSEN Institute; and the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice" (p. 213).
With respect to scope of practice, nurse administrators serve in a variety of capacities in healthcare settings, most notably management, education, and administration. As a result, although nurse administrators are fully trained and educated in patient care, they are typically not directly involved in direct patient care, since their responsibilities are generally focused on the aforementioned capacities. Beyond these similarities, effective nurse administrators also tend to share a number of common characteristics, as discussed below.
Characteristics of an Effective Nurse Administrator
A telephonic interview (NA #1) and a face-to-face interview (NA #2) with two full-time nurse administrators provided valuable insights concerning the factors that make them effective at their jobs. For example, NA #1 indicated that he was most effective at using the "people skills" required to forge strong professional relationships in ways that facilitated his administrative duties, while NA #2 cited her task orientation as being responsible for her effectiveness as a nursing educator.
Although these represent essentially opposite management strategies, they are not mutually exclusive — both NA #1 and NA #2 stressed the need to incorporate evidence-based methods into their day-to-day practice. These specific characteristics are largely consistent with the results of a survey of 1,586 nurse administrators practicing in the United States by Kalb and O'Connor-Von (2015), which identified the use of evidence-based practice for teaching and evaluating nursing student performance and progress.
Other characteristics of an effective nurse administrator identified during these interviews included the following:
In addition, other characteristics of effective nurse administrators cited by Tuten (2012) include the following:
References
Davis, C. K. (2013, June). Rising to the top. American Nurse Today, 8(6), 37.
Kalb, K. A., & O'Connor-Von, S. K. (2015, July–August). Evidence-based teaching practice in nursing education: Faculty perspectives and practices. Nursing Education Perspectives, 36(4), 212–215.
Nursing administrator roles and responsibilities. (2018). Nursing Administration. Retrieved from https://www.bestnursingmasters.com/faq/what-does-a-nursing-administrator-do/
Tuten, T. (2012, October 2). Ten traits of highly effective nurse administrators. Salient. Retrieved from https://blog.soliant.com/careers-in-healthcare/10-traits-of-highly-effective-nurse-administrators/
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