Category: Definition Essay

Today, dramatic changes in the provision of medical services and issues specific to health care are creating the demand for a new kind of medical professionals. A wide range of leadership-related issues arise due to rapid technological development, progress in medicine, scientific findings, new drugs, and innovative methods of treatment. In accordance with contemporary requirements, nursing leaders should be able to deal with complexity, change, and uncertainty, as well as work independently and interdependently, and consider quality care to be of the highest value. Therefore, an immediate and urgent need for the development of nursing leadership has become increasingly obvious nowadays.

It is necessary to carry out significant changes in leadership roles and practices to develop leadership skills and abilities of medical personnel at all levels of health care institutions. This development of professionalism can be crucial in order to eliminate issues specific to health care, such as the nursing shortage, insufficient availability of medical services, inadequate health insurance, high rates of chronic and incurable illnesses, etc.

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The Concepts of Leadership

Leadership is a process that encompasses multiple influences occurring in a group setting. Leadership can be identified as the practice of leading people or entities in order to increase the effectiveness of the healthcare workforce. Leadership involves experimentation, failure, risk, and reward, as well as the movement toward a specific vision and a set of goals. According to Astin and Astin (2007), leadership is a method that targets the promotion of change. Leadership implies a procedure where movement is evident as this kind of headship is viewed in the light of association with leaders who are agents of change. Power, ascendancy, domination, and supremacy are frequently perceived as equivalents of the word “leadership”. Although the word “leader” has been always associated with renowned personalities, today, leadership skills are defined as obligatory managerial abilities in health care.

Furthermore, despite widely accepted viewpoints, leadership does not mean the power or ability to control what people do. According to Greenleaf (1996),

the simplest definition of a leader is one who goes ahead to guide the way… The essential abilities required to lead – values, goals, competence, and spirit – are expressed in two sets of requirements: the ability to set and articulate goals and reach them through the efforts of other people, and the ability to satisfy the people whose judgment must be respected even under stress (p. 294-295).

A plethora of psychology-oriented investigations and behavioral research studies have not entirely elicited the nature of leadership so far. Scholars, theorists, practitioners, and ordinary people endeavor to specify why some individuals are capable of inspiring and motivating others and whether they have inherited or developed abilities to influence others. In order to reveal contemporary requirements for leadership specific to health care, servant leadership theory, transformational leadership theory, situational leadership theory, and role theory should be explored. These theories are all interconnected and determine requirements for effective leadership. The diversity of these theories has erected a complex web of concepts related to issues concerning nursing leadership.