Nursing Leadership and Emotional Intelligence: Enhancing Quality Care - Essay Sample

Introduction

The increased emphasis on continuous improvement of nursing healthcare service delivery has seen a growing body of research on the role of effective nursing leadership in enhancing quality, safety, and accessibility of nursing care to service users. Nursing leadership competencies include effective communication, socializing, conflict resolution and motivational skills, personal reflection skills, and being visionary (McCay, Lyles, & Larkey, 2018). Emotional intelligence refers to the ability of an individual to effectively recognize, understand and control own and other peoples' emotions through proper management of individual thought processes and subsequent actions towards establishing effective interpersonal relationships (Chen & Chen, 2018). This paper evaluates the justifiable relationship between effective nursing leadership and nurse leaders' emotional intelligence application in practice based on current research evidence from research studies and expert opinion.

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Literature Review on Nursing Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

Literature review involved obtaining and systematic evaluation of 30 peer-reviewed journal articles from reliable educational scholarly internet databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and CINAHL.

Effective Nursing Leadership Concepts

The nurse leaders' perception for effective nursing leadership revolves around the ability of individual nurse leader and in collaboration with other relevant healthcare stakeholders to effectively influence and support nursing care service providers to deliver high quality, safe, and accessible nursing care service that adequately meets the patient's care needs, values, and preferences (Anonson, et al., 2014). According to Prezerakos (2018), effective nursing leadership involves ensuring nursing care providers delivers care that adequately meets established professional, ethical, and legal nursing care standards. The effective nursing leadership should also ensure that nursing practitioners provide nursing care aligned to current evidence-based effective care approaches such as patient-centered and evidence-based care concepts (Spear, 2015). The effective undertaking of nursing leadership responsibilities requires the nurse leaders to possess, and apply essential leadership skills such as advocacy, communication, motivational, supervisory, and change management skills (Squires, Tourangeau, Laschinger, & Doran, 2010).

Concepts of Emotional Intelligence

Codier (2011) described the various concepts of emotional intelligence based on Daniel Goleman's model which include self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. Self-awareness refers to an individual's ability to recognize and understand own feelings, moods, and their likely impact on other people in a given situation. Self-awareness individual competencies include the ability for self-confidence, objective self-assessment, and positive self-criticism in evaluating own feelings (Heckemann, Schols, & Halfens, 2015). Self-regulation refers to individual's ability to control disruptive feelings and emotional impulses by redirecting thought processes towards a more useful and productive way that produce appropriate action that best suits the current situation (Abraham & Scaria, 2017). The concept of empathy describes an individual's ability to recognize and understand other people's emotions and expected reactions to inform appropriate response and possible ways of effecting positive influence (Abraham & Scaria, 2017). Social skills refer to an individual's ability to establish, manage, and develop interpersonal relationships that form the basis for collaborative efforts in decision making.

Implications of Emotional Intelligence on Effective Nursing Leadership

Akerjordet & Severinsson (2010) research study findings indicated that nurses working under emotionally intelligent nurse managers reported greater team collaboration, high job satisfaction, and greater ability to effectively deliver quality nursing care. Self-awareness emotional intelligence competency skill enables a nurse leader to recognize and understand own feelings and their possible impacts on their nurse staff through objective personal emotional assessment (Coladonato & Manning, 2017). The initial personal assessment of own emotions allows nurse leaders to device appropriate ways of expressing their feelings to their nursing staff when providing directions, communicating key decisions, and undertaking supervisory duties in a way that promotes positive responses (Cope & Murray, 2017). The nurse leader's ability to influence positive response from the nurse staff regarding various aspects of care delivery enhances their confidence and capacity to influence the staff to continually adopt effective nursing practice interventions (Wallis & Kennedy, 2013). Spano-Szekely, Griffin, Clavelle, and Fitzpatrick (2016) emphasized on the importance of developing self-awareness among nurse leaders in understanding own emotional strengths and weaknesses and predicting their impact on nursing staff when advocating for a change in nursing care provision approach. A nurse leader's objective assessment of own emotional strengths and weaknesses inform the appropriate approach to enact proposed change through effective transformation leadership (Powell, Mabry, & Mixer, 2015).

Self-regulation emotional intelligence competence skill enables a nurse leader to effectively control negative emotional impulses, exercise tolerance to opposing ideas and readiness to accommodate change when dealing with emerging controversial issues among the nurse staff (Yekta & Abdolrahimi, 2015). The nurse leaders' ability to redirect negative emotions and channeling them towards more useful and productive ways when dealing with their nurse staff enables them to avoid unnecessary interpersonal conflict (Feather, 2009). The prevention of unnecessary interpersonal conflicts between nurse managers and the nurse staff promotes effective teamwork that facilitate individual nurse's commitment towards collective efforts goal accomplishment (Bennett & Sawatzky, 2013).

Spano-Szekely et al. (2016) research study findings suggested that emotionally intelligent nursing managers demonstrated focused motivation towards accomplishing preset effective nursing care delivery goals and objectives. Emotionally intelligent nursing leaders' inherent motivation to accomplish set nursing care delivery goals inspires the nursing staff's commitment to the clearly communicated care delivery goals and objectives (Echevarria, Patterson, & Krouse, 2017). Wang, Tao, Bowers, Brown, and Zhang (2018) suggested that emotionally intelligent nurse leaders recognize their critical role in motivating the nursing staff through continuous advocacy and creation of supportive working environment. A highly motivated nursing staff demonstrates high job satisfaction and commitment thereby facilitating reduced work burnout among nursing managers associated with micro-managing poorly motivated staff (Johnson & Smith, 2018).

Emotionally intelligent nurse leaders also exercise empathy with their nursing staff through establishing a strong interpersonal relationship based on effective communication channels that facilitates the exchange of ideas and open sharing of opinions in a non-threatening environment (Crowne et al., 2017). Nursing leaders' exercise of empathy with their nursing staff helps bridge perceived power distance between the nurse leaders enhancing communication. The established effective communication between the nurse leaders and their staff helps nurse managers recognize and understand the individual nurse staff's emotions (Miao, Humphrey, & Qian, 2016). The nurse managers' effective integration of the recognized nurses' emotions in decision making regarding a nursing care delivery issue inspires greater acceptance of the decision made thereby promoting effective implementation (Foltin & Keller, 2012). The exercise of empathy among emotional intelligent nurse leaders enables them to establish individual and collective nurses' underlying empowerment needs (Lucas, Laschinger, & Wong, 2008). The established nursing staff's empowerment needs and preferences inform the nurse managers' decision making regarding preferable managerial support for nursing staff's career development (Trivellas, Gerogiannis, & Svarna, 2011).

Emotionally intelligent nurse leaders possess and apply essential social skills that enable them to establish, manage, and develop effective and reliable relationships with their nursing staff and other nursing healthcare stakeholders (Tyczkowski et al., 2015). The established strong interpersonal relationships between the nursing staff and the nurse leader help the nurse leader to identify individual nurses' practice strength and weaknesses that inform decision making regarding effective delegation of nursing care duties which enhance performance (Schutte & Loi, 2014). Emotionally intelligent nurse leaders' social skills enable them to establish useful relationships and networks with relevant nursing healthcare stakeholders providing a reliable source for technical and material support to enhance the nursing staff capabilities (Ohlson & Anderson, 2015). The social skills also help nurse leaders in effectively providing advocacy for quality patient nursing care and favorable working conditions for nursing staff (Prufeta, 2017).

Conclusion

Nursing leadership involves the ability to influence and manage nursing care provision system, including the nursing staff, towards facilitating high quality, safe, and accessible care. Some important nursing leadership skills and qualities include effective communication, advocacy, motivation, supervisory, and change management skills. Emotional intelligence refers to an individual's ability to recognize and understand own and other people's emotions/feelings and possible subsequent reactions that informs individual's response regarding thought processes and resultant actions in a given situation. The emotional intelligent competency skills include self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Emotional intelligence competency skills for nurse managers' significantly influence the effectiveness of their nursing leadership.

References

Abraham, J., & Scaria, J. (2017). Emotional intelligence: the context for successful nursing leadership: a literature review. Nurse Care Open Acces J, 2(6), 00054. DOI: 10.15406/ncoaj.2017.02.00054

Akerjordet, K., & Severinsson, E. (2010). The state of the science of emotional intelligence related to nursing leadership: an integrative review. Journal of Nursing Management, 18(4), 363-382. doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2834.2010. 01087.x

Anonson, J., Walker, M. E., Arries, E., Maposa, S., Telford, P., & Berry, L. (2014). Qualities of exemplary nurse leaders: perspectives of frontline nurses. Journal of nursing management, 22(1), 127-136. doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12092

Bennett, K., & Sawatzky, J. A. V. (2013). Building emotional intelligence: a strategy for emerging nurse leaders to reduce workplace bullying. Nursing administration quarterly, 37(2), 144-151. DOI: 10.1097/NAQ.0b013e318286de5f

Chen, S. C., & Chen, C. F. (2018). Antecedents and consequences of nurses' burnout: Leadership effectiveness and emotional intelligence as moderators. Management Decision, 56(4), 777-792. doi.org/10.1108/MD-10-2016-0694

Codier, E. (2011). The impact of emotional intelligence development on nurse managers.

Nursing Administration Quarterly, 35 (3), 270-276. DOI: 10.1097/NAQ.0b013e3182243ae3

Coladonato, A. R., & M...