Incorporating Leadership in a Nursing Career

When you love to lead but you know that you are interested in being

a nurse, you may want to develop the skills necessary to be a nursing

administrator. A nursing administrator may take an additional

degree, but if it is what you are passionate about it can be well worth

it.

As a nursing administrator you will find that you are not going to be

having much direct interaction with the patients you are responsible

for. Rather, you are going to be responsible for the team of nurses

that is caring for the patients you are ultimately responsible for.

Organization and respect

When you are managing a team of nurses, you have to understand

the importance of organization and respect towards your

employees. Nursing administration will provide you with the

opportunity that you may want to utilize your leadership skills and help others with their job.

As you organize your team, your unit or just the one nurse that you are responsible for, you should be

very clear about your expectations. There are many people that do not understand how to respectfully

discuss their authority with the team that they are managing.

It is important that you understand how to assert your authority while still being respectful of the

autonomy that the nurses have. Finding a balance while you are managing your own team of nurses can

be difficult, but it will be part of your job as a nursing administrator.

Leadership skills

You should understand that you are going to want to be developing your leadership skills throughout the

time that you are in school. If you are pursuing a nursing

administration degree, it will be necessary that you develop these

leadership skills for your classes and for projects within your

classes.

Being a part of the administration often times has its pros and its

cons. Although you may not be able to work directly with

patients as much as you would have been able to had you been a

nurse, you can be sure that you are providing the best possible

care to your patients.

You will still have patients that you are responsible for and it is important to always take ultimate

responsibility for the work that is being done on your team. There are many people that do not understand

how important it is to always remember their own responsibility.

Should something go wrong, it is ultimately going to lead back to you. This is why it is so important that

your team is trained very well and they are provided with the experience that they need to be successful in

diagnosing and properly dealing with the problems that they see.

Take the time that you need to understand how you are going to develop your training schedule so you

have an effective staff that you know you can count on. Then, you can celebrate your successes together

and learn from any failures or mistakes to ensure that they are not going to happen any time in the near

future.

Photo credit: Tampa Band Photos, Meagan