Leadership Qualities and Nursing Practice

Effective leaders often leave a mark in the lives of those they lead, even many years after the encounter, even if the encounter was a brief one. One of the greatest leaders that have had significant influence over my life is my current Director of nurses with whom I have enjoyed working and gotten inspired over the brief encounter we have had. When I found myself under her leadership, at first I was apprehensive and unsure of what to expect from her. However, over time she has proven to not only be instrumental in development of my leadership skills, but also highly inspiring to our team and an asset to us all. She comes out as a fair leader who will treat all the nurses under her equally without favoring people close to her than the rest of the students. She fairly distributes the tasks to be completed and points out the mistakes as they are. She is also the director who understands that a nurse can make an honest mistake and she will stand behind her nurses to try and help them out of a mistake without overbearingly criticizing or dehumanizing them. She is also seen to be one who likes responsibility and accountability. She holds each nurse accountable to the actions or inactions they involve in. this has helped her shape us to mature and responsible professionals while at the same time having her responsibilities taken care of. She is one who means business when it is time for serious business.... She will ensure that the curriculum is effectively covered, and the tasks that we are to engage in are taken up without fail.
My leadership vision as a nurse is to be able to inspire hope in the patients that I will be dealing with and inspire professionalism among colleagues from different parts of the world that I will be working with in the future. This vision is informed by the fact that I look forward to working in culturally diverse and different from my culture, possibly in a third world country.

One of personal attributes that I have which help me in showing leadership qualities is that I am easily approachable and I have experienced several peers and even very young children opening up to me on very sensitive issues to do with personal challenges in the course of my nursing encounters. When I take to handling an issue, I am always persistent and patient to the point that I see the challenge successfully solved. I like it when I follow a challenge to the logical end providing initial counseling, where necessary make referrals and perpetually do follow ups after referral to other professionals in the field like personal trainers and psychiatrists. I also pride myself as a highly confidential person which is a leadership quality in this nursing field that is held with very high esteem. This approach is informed by the knowledge that nursing is diverse and divergent since there are several aspects involved in it more than just…