Nurse Manager Skills: Strengths, Leadership, and Goals

Introduction to Nurse Manager Skills

The process of becoming a successful nurse manager entails multi-tasking across a wide range of issues on a daily basis, from addressing patient safety concerns to resolving disputes among nursing staff. However, practitioners serving as nurse managers may find it difficult to allocate adequate time in the day to accomplish all required activities. The professional role of nurse managers is crucial in the delivery of quality health care and in enhancing the effectiveness of these practitioners. Nonetheless, nurse managers need to possess certain skills in order to improve their efficiency in their respective job duties.

Some of the necessary skills include personal and professional accountability, career planning, personal journey disciplines, reflective practice behaviors, and leadership skills. These professionals can identify their strengths and weaknesses in these areas through evaluation using the Nurse Manager Skills Inventory, which was developed by the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE).

Evaluation of Strengths and Weaknesses

The AONE Nurse Manager Skills Inventory contains competencies and skills that are essential for nurse managerial practice regardless of the professional's educational level or title in various health facilities (The AONE Nurse Executive Competencies, 2011). Based on the document, my competencies in personal and professional accountability can be rated as competent. I currently hold an Associate Degree in Nursing and am pursuing a Bachelor of Science in the same field, which helps me stay current in this discipline. In my current practice, the nursing environment enables the team to initiate actions that produce results — especially positive patient outcomes — while being held accountable for those actions and results. The actions of the nursing team are guided by the ethical standards of the organization, which support the scope of practice and nursing standards within the facility. However, a primary weakness is that I am not yet involved in a suitable professional association that promotes professional networking and development.

In relation to career planning, my main strengths include a clear understanding of job descriptions and requirements in the field. My responsibilities involve providing direct care to patients and serving as a role model and mentor to other professionals on the nursing team. This has enabled me to teach these practitioners additional nursing techniques and behaviors, offer career advice, and address critical questions. My commitment to continuing education provides a platform for planning and understanding my future in the field, keeping me current with the ever-changing needs of healthcare.

Under personal journey disciplines, my main strengths are action learning and reflective practice, though a weakness is shared leadership and council management due to my limited involvement in a professional association. In the area of reflective practice behaviors, my strengths include holding to the truth, embracing diversity as a means to wholeness, pursuing discovery and potential, and maintaining commitments to oneself. On the contrary, my weaknesses include holding various perspectives without judgment and nurturing intellectual and emotional self-awareness.

According to the findings of a notable survey, a significant number of nursing staff and practitioners feel powerless in their duties and are unable to act independently. The sense of powerlessness, job dissatisfaction, stress, and burnout is not only a chronic problem in the profession but also leads to diminished effectiveness (Garner, 2011). Therefore, there is an increased need to advocate for change in nursing through the development of leadership skills — a need that persists even though nurses are well-equipped in clinical competencies such as conducting patient evaluations and operating complex equipment.

Using Leadership Skills to Advocate for Change

Through leadership development, there are two major approaches to advocating for change in the workplace: empowering nurses and transforming care at the bedside. As a nurse manager, significant investment will be made in empowering nurses, particularly by providing leadership training. This is largely because the chronic problems of job dissatisfaction and powerlessness often stem from a lack of adequate leadership training. Providing such training will not only foster an environment of empowered nurses and shared governance but will also drive meaningful workplace change.

Additionally, the Transforming Care at the Bedside initiative will be adopted and implemented in the organization. This initiative creates workplace change by taking a unique approach to quality-of-care issues — enabling nursing staff to develop their own processes and interventions to enhance patient care.

Conclusion

The role and function of the nurse manager continues to be critical for improving the delivery of health care services and meeting healthcare needs. Nonetheless, for an individual to function in this position effectively, he or she requires core competencies such as nurse managerial skills, leadership skills, and clearly defined personal goals.

Garner, C. (2011, April). Powerlessness is bad practice: Any nurse can be a facilitator of change. Retrieved from American Sentinel University website: http://www.americansentinel.edu/wp-content/uploads/FacilitatingChangeWhitePaper.pdf

Gscarlett. (2009, March 21). Using goals to grow in nursing. Retrieved July 17, 2012, from

The AONE nurse executive competencies. (2011). The American Organization of Nurse Executives. Retrieved July 17, 2012, from http://www.aone.org/resources/leadership%20tools/PDFs/AONENEC.pdf