Which qualities would the nurse possess who is being selected as a leader of a nursing unit Select all that apply?

Table of Contents Show

Nurse Manager Job Description
Skills of a Successful Nurse Manager
Nurse Manager Salary and Job Growth
The Future of Nurse Managers
Lead Others in an Important Nursing Role
Recommended Reading
The nurse leader role
Most important skill for a nurse leader
The importance of leadership in nursing
Improving quality of care and patient safety
Implementing change as a nurse leader

The national nursing shortage is a serious issue that demands action. More than one-fifth of the nurses responding to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing’s 2020 National Nursing Workforce Survey reported that they were planning on retiring in the next five years. Perhaps more alarming is the shortage’s current impact on the health care industry. A March 2022 survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 28% of nursing facilities posted at least one staffing shortage during the previous week.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects there will be roughly 203,200 job openings for registered nurses and about 112,700 job openings for nurse practitioners each year between 2021 and 2031. Many of these openings will be for management positions. Nurses who aspire to become nurse managers are coming into the field at an ideal time. To plan their careers, they should consider the typical nurse manager job description and the essential skills for the job.

Nurse Manager Job Description

Nurse managers supervise nursing staff in a hospital or clinical settings. They oversee patient care, make management and budgetary decisions, set work schedules, coordinate meetings, and make personnel decisions. They also recruit and train nurses and other health care professionals and maintain a facility’s records.

Additionally, nurse managers work with staff to apply emerging nursing theories to care delivery. They also implement state and federal regulatory guidelines for patient safety and educate staff about any changes in the laws and how they impact care delivery.

Nurse managers work in a number of clinical settings, such as hospitals, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, and psychiatric institutions. They are responsible for ensuring every aspect of a facility’s nursing program runs as efficiently as possible, from patient interactions to departmental operations. Their efforts can help close care delivery gaps due to nursing shortages and improve patient outcomes.

Skills of a Successful Nurse Manager

Successful nurse managers apply a holistic approach to health care and care delivery. The role requires skills in areas beyond clinical care. Nurse managers should be adept at coordinating resources and personnel and meeting goals and objectives. They must be effective communicators who can balance the needs of their nursing staff and their facilities’ administrators. They must also have foundational business and budgeting skills to handle the administrative side of the role effectively.

In addition to these core competencies, the following characteristics are common among successful nurse managers:

Effective Communication — Part of being an effective leader is listening to staff and patient concerns and communicating their needs. Nurse managers must be able to build a solid rapport with all staff members, from the janitorial staff to head administrators, as well as with patients.
Advocacy — In some cases, nurse leaders might have to advocate for staff to ensure a safe and reasonable practice environment. In other cases, they might have to advocate for patient safety and access to quality health care. Nurse managers should not be afraid of using their voices and position.
Participation — With so many administrative demands, it is important that nurse managers balance business with patient care. Nurse managers must have superior clinical skills to ensure patient safety and well-being.
Mentoring — Successful nurse leaders do not micromanage their staff. They encourage, empower, mentor, and find strengths. They boost creativity and mindfulness.
Maturity — Nurse managers do not immediately take sides in squabbles or assess blame before knowing all the facts. They don’t let simmering emotions boil over. Instead, they meet conflict and work through it.
Professionalism — Nurse managers follow their moral compass to ensure all aspects of the profession are met with honesty and integrity. They address people with respect and do not bully.
Supportive — Nurse managers don’t set the bar for expectations unreasonably high. Instead, they use supportive encouragement to challenge employees to succeed. They coach and mentor.

Nurse Manager Salary and Job Growth

As of August 2022, the median annual salary for nurse managers was about $90,000, according to PayScale, with the top 10% making roughly $122,000 per year. Several factors can affect a nurse manager’s salary, such as their education level, experience, and location.

The BLS includes nurse managers in the medical and health services category, a group that it predicts will experience 28% job growth between 2021 and 2031, which is significantly higher than the 8% projected job growth overall.

The Future of Nurse Managers

As the current nursing workforce ages and retires, the anticipated shortage of nurses will create opportunities for newly minted nurse managers. Their work can be vital in numerous ways. Significantly, effective leaders can improve morale in a health care facility, which can mitigate the potential for nurse burnout.

Effective nurse leaders also can help facilities adapt to the ever-evolving care delivery landscape. Cohesive relationships among staff members and better communication with staff can ease the implementation of new care delivery strategies and regulatory changes.

Lead Others in an Important Nursing Role

Effective nurse managers are key to alleviating the effects of the nursing shortage. Duquesne University’s online post-master’s nursing certificates teach registered nurses the skills they need to advance in their careers and take on leadership roles.

Students can choose from specializations such as Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, Family (Individual Across the Lifespan) Nurse Practitioner and Nurse Education and Faculty Role, or they can focus on management skills in a dedicated Executive Nurse Leadership and Health Care Management Post-Master’s Certificate program. Learn how we can help you cultivate the leadership skills to make a difference.

The nurse leader role

As nurse leaders become increasingly aware of the correlation between a stronger team and stronger achievements in patient quality and safety, understanding how to incorporate steps for strategic, long-term success into day-to-day practice is key. In any given day, a nurse leader will problem solve for issues related to bedside care, patient safety, budget constraints, and staffing shortages. Being able to perform well under pressure and balance the myriad of daily challenges is no small endeavor for even the most experienced nurse leader.

Aside from analyzing reports and dashboards (quality metrics, data, and finances), a nurse leader must also focus on their people. Without a team that feels supported, motivated, and inspired, the nurse leader and the organization will experience negative consequences. A good nurse leader will incorporate a healthy balance of managing people and processes into their daily routines by ensuring staff is recognized for quality improvements, that feedback is encouraged to promote continued success in improving patient care, and a physical presence is maintained (onsite visits, rounding or huddles) to show support and appreciation.

Most important skill for a nurse leader

While many leadership qualities in nursing can naturally benefit a nurse leader throughout their career, the willingness and ability to learn new skills will help them succeed in their nurse leadership role. For example, nurses are not always prepared for managing budgets, utilization goals, quality metrics, yet these are critical components of a nurse leader’s role. Effective leadership and management in nursing requires the will and capacity to quickly adapt in whatever way they can to succeed (mentorship, additional education and training, etc.). If we ask, “what is the most important skill of the nurse leader?” one all-encompassing answer might be agility.

Agility as nursing leadership skill: Of all the leadership skills in nursing, agility allows a nurse leader to implement rapid changes that will benefit the organization without sacrificing momentum or losing sight of the overall vision/goal. Aside from the constant flux in healthcare processes (changing regulatory requirements, new evidence-based standards, updates to reimbursement policies), nurses have more and more options for in their careers rather than traditional bedside nursing. Nursing leaders must be agile in adapting to not only new processes in the nursing industry, but also flexible and forward thinking enough to effectively lead nurses that will be in the field for many years to come. This will bring a new set of unpredictable challenges and opportunities.

Additionally, a truly agile nurse leader will be prepared to take on the growing number of paths in their own career. With opportunities to impact patient care on a global level through policymaking, research studies, or new impactful initiatives across the care continuum—agile nurse leaders that are comfortable with thriving during times of unpredictably see the potential for greatness whereas others may see instability as a hindrance.

What additional practice behaviors do you believe describe an effective nurse leader?

The importance of leadership in nursing

With the ever-evolving healthcare industry, one truth will always remain constant—leadership in nursing practice directly impacts an organization’s drive, performance, and people (caregivers and patients alike). As hospitals and health systems strive to improve patient care, an emphasis is placed on adopting characteristics of a highly reliable organization (an organization that works to create an environment in which potential problems are anticipated, detected early, and nearly always addressed early enough to prevent catastrophic consequences). In truly highly reliable organizations, leadership skills are encouraged throughout the organization. While it’s often common to focus leadership efforts at the highest levels of a hospital or health system, middle-management leaders (such as nurse leaders) are key to an organization’s success and directly impact many front-line caregivers and healthcare workers.

Because nurses make up the largest segment of the healthcare workforce and spend more one-on-one time with patients than any other role in the industry, it’s clear to see the undeniable impact that nurses have on patient care (positively or negatively). Only with strong nurse leadership will nurses continue to grow and help shape smarter healthcare delivery of the future. While physicians and healthcare executives certainly serve as key decision makers on an organization’s high reliability journey, the importance of leadership in nursing should not be underestimated, as nurses have an awesome responsibility to improve patient care that cannot be ignored. Only with strong, steady, and swift (agile) nurse leadership having a voice at the table will healthcare change for the better.

Improving quality of care and patient safety

Effective leadership in nursing practice has been linked to major contributions to the healthcare industry as whole. As discussed in the Institute of Medicine’s The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path To Achieve Health Equity report, nurses should be included as full partners (with physicians and other healthcare professionals) in redesigning healthcare in the U.S. Due to the significant impact nursing leaders have on their direct units and teams, their leadership effectiveness is crucial to determining how patients will ultimately be affected. Studies continue to support a strong correlation between effective leadership and a high-quality work environment. This, in turn leads to a culture of safety that includes positive patient outcomes—further attesting to the importance of leadership in nursing.

Implementing change as a nurse leader

Hospitals and health systems that understand the importance of nursing leadership in implementing change will be better equipped to make an impact on patient safety and quality initiatives. With the ever-changing healthcare landscape, nurses are constantly met with new challenges, practices, and opportunities. Having a strong nurse leader in place to help navigate these changes can often make or break a nurse’s decision to stay or leave an organization. While nurses (both new and experienced) are generally understanding of the healthcare industry’s nature of change, they will be better prepared for success in their roles if leadership is able to implement change in a way that allows the unit/team to see the overall benefit of the change, in the least disruptive way possible.