Introduction
Aaron’s evidence-based implementation leadership program framework provides an in-depth understanding of what effective leadership should entail. The framework guides how leaders should conduct themselves in the workplace. Aaron’s framework expresses leaders as proactive, supportive, knowledgeable, and perseverant individuals. Servant leaders are individuals who lead by example since they are always supportive, perseverant, aggressive, and knowledgeable. In the health sector, this leadership framework is the most effective as it represents the complete monument of a servant leader.
This model is relevant to the project as it will allow the nurse leaders to find the appropriate solutions to any challenges they face during their leadership periods. Nurse leaders face high burnout rates, poor communication, and ineffective recruitment processes (Wei et al., 2020). With this framework, the project’s goals of efficient communication between the nurse leaders and the nurses can be achieved. Furthermore, it will broaden the nurse leaders so that they will develop proper strategies for regularly meeting with the nursing staff to discuss existing issues and find solutions.
Proactive Leadership
Proactive leadership generally entails planning how to improve the teams’ efficiency and taking probable measures to prevent a problem (Mostafa, & El-Motalib, 2019). This kind of leadership mainly revolves around identifying risk factors that your team is prone to and working on measures to reduce their impact. Proactive leaders engage with their team to know what challenges they’re facing and look for ways to be better. One characteristic of a visionary leader includes excellent problem-solving skills. Being a proactive leader means that you always anticipate problems. Therefore, finding a solution to any challenge becomes more manageable. Another characteristic of visionary leadership is working on the team’s strengths (Mostafa, & El-Motalib, 2019). Since they anticipate problems and work on how to reduce their impact on the team, they always seek to work on the strong pillars of the group. Therefore, such leaders should continuously study their team’s strengths and weaknesses.
Examples
A nurse leader who works in a relatively big hospital with few employees and high rates of patient fluctuation knows that their teams can suffer from high burnout rates. Nurses can work for extended hours, and the environment can be relatively stressful. The high rates of burnout can ultimately lead to reduced performance levels that can increase turnover rates. As a proactive leader, the nurse will encourage the team to develop strong interpersonal relationships (Wei et al., 2020). With this, they will be able to share their frustrations and disappointments. Again, the nurse leader can develop an effective work pattern for the team that will allow them to get enough sleep. The work pattern can be defined as the number of hours individual works during the day and at night.
Failure to propose a viable budget can affect the kind of healthcare patients receive. In particular, this is because the team members may have inadequate salaries, which can result in high turnover rates. Improper budgeting can also lead to insufficient medical supplies. Again, a proactive nurse leader is aware of the tight line that might come along with improper budgeting. With such knowledge, nurse leaders take proactive measures by studying previous budget trends and developing proper strategies for a workable budget. Such a measure may involve partnering with informatics, which analyzes financial information to make budgetary recommendations.
Proactive Leadership within the EBP
Proactive leadership can guide the implementation of my EBP since it allows me to be more prepared. Through this leadership, I can anticipate and change problems before impacting my team (Shuman et al., 2020). Moreover, it allowed me to dictate the leadership position and provide control over the situation my team might be facing. With this leadership element, I can be sure of better patient care that will improve the quality of health in the facility.
Knowledgeable Leadership
When nurse leaders are knowledgeable, they understand what is going on and believe they can make a difference. For instance, when a country faces low employment rates, a knowledgeable leader understands the issues and thinks they can make a difference. It is from this point that leaders develop strategies on how to impact change. In other words, knowledgeable leaders are great problem solvers. Another general characteristic among knowledgeable leaders includes good decision-making power. Knowledgeable nurse leaders make viable decisions that provide conducive work environments. An institution that has knowledgeable leaders has increased productivity. Notably, this is because there is low employee conflict.
Examples
When nurse leader faces the issue of retaining their team members, they understand its impact on the entire health facility. Failure to maintain the nursing staff will affect the patient care they offer. Also, it can lead to high burnout rates among employees. As a knowledgeable leader, the nurse manager will understand why the issue is developing and how to stop it immediately. In response to this, they can start developing trust in nurses so that they can feel valued in patient care delivery. The nurse leader can also show some sensitivity to the staff since they are all from different generations and have different working styles.
Moreover, a nursing leader may face the issue of staffing which consumes a lot of time while solving the staffing puzzles. Through the knowledge they have put together about their staff, knowledgeable nurse leaders create rotatable timetables that will cater to the nurses’ personal and family time. Notably, they are supposed to draw workable staffing ratios that will be convenient for each individual. When there are unworkable staffing ratios, the team members will develop chaos since they all want to work at their convenient time.
Knowledgeable Leadership within the EBP
Generally, being a knowledgeable leader has sharpened my problem-solving skills and reasoning.
I have integrated this leadership element into my EBP by providing a sufficient understanding of the challenge that might be facing some of the team members. In other words, knowledgeable leadership has guided me to offer solutions to challenges encountered throughout the study (Shuman et al., 2020).
Supportive Leadership
A general characteristic of supportive leadership is empathy. A supportive leader can understand what their team members feel or experience. Through their compassion, they can listen with the goal of understanding and helping without any form of bias. Another characteristic of a supportive leader is being approachable. A supportive leader is an individual whose employees can approach them at any time when faced with a problem. Approachable leaders show concern since they are treated with respect and dignity.
Examples
An excellent example of a supportive nurse leader is mainly felt when an employee faces a demise. Being the team leader, an individual can decide to gather up some financial resources with the rest of the team members to help with the hospital bills. The nurse leader can also engineer the team to offer emotional support. Again, a supportive leader can easily be approached when a nursing staff faces frustration and stress due to high burnout rates. In such a case, the individual comes with their nurse manager, hoping they will be listened to and solve their issue.
Supportive Leadership within the EBP
I have integrated supportive leadership in my EBP by showing the nurses that I understand their fears of contracting an infection while providing care. When they approached me, I was able to encourage them and give them hope. After sharing their fears, I encourage them to educate themselves on how to develop strategies that will prevent infections. With this, the caregivers heightened their confidence and increased their competencies.
Perseverant Leadership
Self-belief is an evident characteristic of perseverant leadership (Platis et al., 2021). Despite the challenges that might come along, a perseverant leader has the strife to go on and meet their achieved income. External and internal forces do not undermine such leaders. Therefore, they mainly achieve their objectives. In other words, perseverant leaders are go-getters.
Furthermore, they are accurate with their operations (Platis et al., 2021). They do background research before commencing any project. Again, acquire expert advice to ensure that their perseverance is well-focused.
Examples
In an extensive hospital, the nurse leader notices poor healthcare delivery and decides to research the probable cause of the problem. To ensure that their perseverance is well-focused, they choose to investigate the causes of poor patient care. Also, they seek informatics advice on how to go about the whole process. With this, they are sure to get accurate results on the causes of poor care delivery. Nevertheless, my persevering nature in leadership allowed me to deliver care to COVID-19 patients despite knowing I was also risking my health. I had a definite purpose of providing healthcare since most of my colleagues were away and feared getting infected.
Perseverant Leadership within the EBP
I have integrated perseverant leadership in my EBP by believing that I can make it despite the many criticisms I got from my colleagues. It was terrifying to conduct the central line-associated bloodstream infections project, mainly because I interacted with some patients. However, this leadership element kept reminding me of my main goal, which kept me going.
Conclusion
Generally, leadership entails a broad scope of elements for it to be effective. Nurse leaders should be knowledgeable, perseverant, supportive, and proactive in providing efficient healthcare. They ought to understand that this is a noble task that requires a lot of commitment and dedication to succeed. While technology changes, they should keep advancing their leadership framework to deliver efficient patient care.
References
Mostafa, A. M. S., & El-Motalib, E. A. A. (2019). Servant leadership, leader-member exchange and proactive behavior in the public health sector. Public Personnel Management, 48(3), 309-324.
Platis, C., Delimpaltadakis, E., Stergiannis, P., Kostagiolas, P., & Intas, G. (2021). Evidence-based leadership: A study of its application to general hospital of the public health system through the implementation leadership scale. GeNeDis, 9-15. Springer, Cham.
Shuman, C. J., Ehrhart, M. G., Torres, E. M., Veliz, P., Kath, L. M., VanAntwerp, K.,… & Aarons, G. A. (2020). EBP implementation leadership of frontline nurse managers: validation of the implementation leadership scale in acute care. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 17(1), 82-91.
Wei, H., King, A., Jiang, Y., Sewell, K. A., & Lake, D. M. (2020). The impact of nurse leadership styles on nurse burnout: A systematic literature review. Nurse Leader, 18(5), 439-450.