Please give me a great response to my classmates post.

Nurse leaders can improve staffing measures to ensure adequate nursing care is being delivered to our patients by listening to their staff, being supportive of suggestions, providing positive feedback, and advocating for appropriate staffing levels to provide adequate, safe care to patients. Many factors influence staff experience; however, leaders are influential in shaping the work environment by virtue of their hierarchical position, and via their day-to-day interactions with staff (Avolio et al, 2009). Leaders can promote a positive work environment for staff while being involved in patient care promoting positive patient outcomes and quality care. If nurse managers see an active leader, they will tend to follow his/her lead and be more involved with care. Showing that you can about your staff, the safety to perform their jobs to their fullest ability, and consistently checking on job satisfaction is important to improving staffing measures. It’s important to relay to management the importance of adequate staffing for the safety of the staff and the patients.

Consistently reviewing staffing patterns and work schedules is important while sharing thoughts and ideas with staff regarding overtime, issues with staffing, proper and safe patient/staff ratio and reinforcing them that management is aware of staffing issues and what is being done about them at the present time. It’s important to provide positive feedback and thank them for all the work they continuously do and the importance of teamwork to provide quality, safe, patient care.

Nurse leader and nurse manager have different roles. A nurse leader is generally less hands on and more focused on setting policies and, overseeing quality measurements, ensure that care is performed within regulatory compliance and are responsible for overall quality and delivery of patient care, patient, and staff satisfaction, and fulfilling the organizations mission and vision. Not all nurse leaders practice this way, I am considered a nurse Leader in my current position of Director of Nursing, but I prefer to be more hands on, involved with staffing issues and patient care, and ensure that families are happy as well. Staffing issues are affected by stress, burnout, injuries, and poor-quality care. Key characteristics of supportive leaders include giving clear feedback seeking team player input about decisions that affect their work, caring for the health and wellbeing of followers, and showing appreciation for people’s work (West et al, 2022).

A nurse managers function is to ensure that everything is running smoothly on the units and is involved in daily tasks and details related to patient care planning and ensuring that goals are being met by staff. The nurse manager ensures that staff on the units is carrying out assignments appropriately and professionally. Staff looks to their managers for support, direction, and communication. Nurse managers can also help improve staffing measures to ensure adequate nursing care is delivered to our patients, by helping with hands on care when they are short on the units, and advocate to nurse leaders for appropriate staffing, stressing the importance of providing safe, effective, quality care to their patients. Nurse managers can help motivate their team by providing a positive environment and acknowledging the hard work that the staff is doing daily. It’s important to reward positive behavior and hard work after it is done and acknowledge staff for working under difficult conditions at time.

I feel it’s important to show positive leadership skills. Although my role is Director of Nursing and is a nurse leader, I don’t ever let it define my ability to work as a cart nurse, desk nurse, nursing assistant, helping with meals, helping with wound care or any other aspect of patient care that I can help support my team with. Having a positive nurse leader can strongly affecting your staffing and patient outcomes. It’s important to recognize all your staff daily and help them as much as you can. High quality, continually improving and compassionate care for patients, is dependent on supportive leadership, which lays the foundation for high quality, continually improving and compassionate support for staff (West et al, 2022).

Avolio, B. J., Walumbwa, F. O., & Weber, T. J. (2009). Leadership: current theories, research, and future directions. Annual review of psychology, 60, 421–449. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163621

West, T., Daher, P., Dawson, J. F., Lyubovnikova, J., Buttigieg, S. C., & West, M. A. (2022). The relationship between leader support, staff influence over decision making, work pressure and patient satisfaction: a cross-sectional analysis of NHS datasets in England. BMJ open, 12(2), e052778. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-052778