Strategies for Dealing with Sexual Harassment

Disucss about the leadership challenges faced by you as a student nurse.

The essay intends to develop an effective action plan that is supported with evidenced based literature in order to deal with the concerns that took place for my personal development as a learner and leader (Bish, Kenny & Nay, 2015). Considering the same, I will discuss clear strategies for all leadership challenges faced by me as a student nurse.

I find the story of “Saving Patients from Dr Death” by Toni Hoffman quite compelling as I can relate to it. Being a nursing student, I see the significance of belief, assumption and values that has been addressed in the particular story. Considering my future profession, saving lives and taking intensive care is my primary objective while doing it with integrity and taking pride in the same (Cheng et al., 2016). The code of conduct of a nurse is admirable along with those who are associated it such as the medical practitioners. As far as our story is concerned, the writer has pointed out the competence as well as behavior of Dr. Pater portrayed as Dr. Death, who is alleged of sexually harassing the female staff. I would also appreciate Toni for reporting Dr. Patel within the first five weeks of his practice considering the nature of wound and pain accompanied that the patients would suffer after having undergone his operations. However, the administration opposed him and he was pressurized to take his complaint back but still Toni continued his course and was able to save several lives after involving government in the matter (Cope & Murray, 2017).

The story highlighted some of the serious issues which I find to be of utmost significance considering my career prospects as a nurse. The primary issue is with the professionalism which includes sexual harassment. Next comes the ill practice of medicine which is out of health center’s structure such as the operations which is supposed to be conducted in some advanced medical institutions should not be carried out in a rural medical hospital. The third issue arises concerning the competence of the doctor whose subject is surgery (Démeh & Rosengren, 2015). It shadows the ethical value of such a noble profession. The fourth issue concerns the communication gap amongst the staff which includes the criticizing Dr. Patel’s incompetence among each-other without raising voices against him. Moreover, the biasness was one of the biggest failures of the administration.

Strategies for Conducting Tasks Beyond Abilities of Healthcare Center

Encountering the same issue during the clinical practice, my response will be influenced by my learning style and the way I lead myself. Being a person of strong ethics and conduct, if I face any such situation, I would inspect as well as determine the exact cause of wound suffered by a patient who are being operated. I would try to expose the doctor responsible for the same after verifying the issue (Solà et al., 2016). If I face sexual harassment, an immediate action is on the way for the accused as I will report it to the relevant authorities. If I ever come across any failed case of surgeries conducted by some doctor, then I will conduct a thorough investigation to ascertain the certifications and qualifications of the doctor as well as his subjects. If I find anything uncertain, then informing the appropriate authorities will be my first responsibility. However, if I find that the response from such authorities are not as expected then informing the Ministry of Health will be my prior mission given my ethics and conduct as a nurse (Liang et al. 2016).     

The leadership challenges that I am dealing with being a nurse is regarding professional conduct with other employees such as sexual harassment. I have considered developing certain effective strategies in dealing with the same (MacPhail, Young & Ibrahim, 2015). I can deal with sexual harassment prevention through developing my leadership quality in a way that solely focuses on the importance of maintainice workplace safety. Being in the nursing profession I will make try to convince the management of the hospital to maintaining certain decisive policies and procedures for reporting sexual harassment ad dealing with reported cases. Being a leader, I will ensure that the managers and staff go through regular training on sexual harassment that includes in-person classes along with vignettes on role playing (McKenna 2018). My leadership quality will also focus on developing strategies regarding screening of new employees for monitoring violence, bullying and harassment risk factors. This can facilitate in dealing with the cases of sexual harassment in some severe instances. I will make sure that certain strategies can be developed in dealing with the instances of sexual harassment of employees. I will focus on prevention of such instances from the top down along with providing regular training to employees and managers regarding comprehensive sexual harassment in the nursing practice.

Strategies for Dealing with Medical Incompetence

Another challenge that I am facing is regarding issue of conducting tasks that are beyond my ability or even the capability of the health center. Some effective leadership based strategies are developed by me in order to address such concern. In dealing with such concern, I have considered to employ my leadership skills in developing necessary health care management skills (McKenna et al., 2018). I will consider developing certain vital skills in information management, analytical skills, action skills. Considering the need for developing such skills in carrying out tasks beyond my abilities I believe that the most vital type of skills that will be required includes affective, interpersonal and emotional skills that facilitates working with people those are more experienced by me. In acquiring this type of skill I will consider developing leadership skills that enhances the capability to motivate and inspire others (Murray, Sundin & Cope 2017). Tis will facilitate me to provide other nursing staff with innovative ideas for negotiating and promoting the joint projects. Certain relationship skills will also be developed by me in order to develop abilities of self-consciousness so that I can accurately evaluate my as well as my fellow nursing staff nursing practices. This can also facilitate me in gaining effective capabilities of collaboration, communication along with abilities of effective team work. I will so develop ability of promoting and establishing relations with my fellow nursing staff through which I can help others in obtaining capability to lead groups along with teaching others to effectively work in the (Roche, Laschinger & Duffield, 2015).

The third challenge that I am experiencing in my nursing profession is regarding the incompetence of doctors who is involved in offering critical services such as surgery. Effective strategies in order to deal with such challenge is also considered by me through developing a culture of safety and quality maintainice, managing trust and ensuring performance of clinical duties by the doctors. Being a leader I will develop certain strategies so that doctors remain responsible and aware of carrying out highly successful clinical services such as surgery (Scully 2015). In developing such culture, I will ensure training of doctors for engaging will colleagues in maintaining and enhancing the safety and quality of patient care. I will also try to develop a culture in the nursing practice of raining and acting on the patient safety concerns. Demonstration of effective leadership will also be conducted by me that can contribute to training and teaching of doctors through acting as a positive role model. Moreover, in order to train doctors in maintaining superior performance in surgical practice certain supervision arrangements will be made that will maintain lines of responsibility for care offered to individual patients.

Strategies for Addressing Biased Management

The fourth issue in my nursing profession is regarding the management failure for taking biased actions against the senior employees which has been reported by junior staff. In order to address such concern, I have decided to use my leadership ability in motivating employees, generating a culture of responsibility, developing trusting relationships and making the management informed regarding taking of unbiased decisions for the wellbeing of the nursing staff and hospital (Yahaya & Ebrahim, 2016). I will make sure that such biasness is reduced through following a style of transformational leadership in the hospital. To make sure that the management is unbiased against the senior employees through making communication a priority among the nursing staff. I will also try to carry out regular meetings along with interacting with all the senior staff along with the management in a defined manner. This can make people feel valued and connected.

Conclusion

The essay intended to develop an effective action plan that is supported with evidenced based literature in order to deal with the concerns that took place for my personal development as a learner and leader. I gathered from completion of the essay that encountering the same issue during the clinical practice, my response will be influenced by my learning style and the way I lead myself. Being a person of strong ethics and conduct, if I face any such situation, I would inspect as well as determine the exact cause of wound suffered by a patient who are being operated. I have also gathered that in dealing with such concern, I have considered to employ my leadership skills in developing necessary health care management skills. I will consider developing certain vital skills in information management, analytical skills, action skills. Being in the nursing profession I will make try to convince the management of the hospital to maintaining certain decisive policies and procedures for reporting sexual harassment ad dealing with reported cases.

References

Bish, M., Kenny, A., & Nay, R. (2015). Factors that influence the approach to leadership: directors of nursing working in rural health services. Journal of nursing management, 23(3), 380-389.

Cheng, C., Bartram, T., Karimi, L., & Leggat, S. (2016). Transformational leadership and social identity as predictors of team climate, perceived quality of care, burnout and turnover intention among nurses. Personnel Review, 45(6), 1200-1216.

Cope, V., & Murray, M. (2017). Leadership styles in nursing. Nursing Standard (2014+), 31(43), 61.

Démeh, W., & Rosengren, K. (2015). The visualisation of clinical leadership in the content of nursing education—a qualitative study of nursing students’ experiences. Nurse education today, 35(7), 888-893.

Solà, G. J., i Badia, J. G., Hito, P. D., Osaba, M. A. C., & García, J. L. D. V. (2016). Self-perception of leadership styles and behaviour in primary health care. BMC health services research, 16(1), 572.

Liang, H. Y., Tang, F. I., Wang, T. F., Lin, K. C., & Yu, S. (2016). Nurse characteristics, leadership, safety climate, emotional labour and intention to stay for nurses: a structural equation modelling approach. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(12), 3068-3080.

MacPhail, A., Young, C., & Ibrahim, J. E. (2015). Workplace-based clinical leadership training increases willingness to lead: appraisal using multisource feedback of a clinical leadership program in regional Victoria, Australia. Leadership in Health Services, 28(2), 100-118.

McKenna, L., Copnell, B., Butler, A. E., & Lau, R. (2018). Learning style preferences of Australian accelerated postgraduate pre-registration nursing students: A cross-sectional survey. Nurse education in practice, 28, 280-284.

Murray, M., Sundin, D., & Cope, V. (2017). The nexus of nursing leadership and a culture of safer patient care. Journal of clinical nursing.

Roche, M. A., Laschinger, H. K. S., & Duffield, C. (2015). Testing the Nursing Worklife Model in Canada and Australia: A multi-group comparison study. International journal of nursing studies, 52(2), 525-534.

Scully, N. J. (2015). Leadership in nursing: The importance of recognising inherent values and attributes to secure a positive future for the profession. Collegian, 22(4), 439-444.

Yahaya, R., & Ebrahim, F. (2016). Leadership styles and organizational commitment: literature review. Journal of Management Development, 35(2), 190-216.