Essay on Nursing Leadership in Times of Crisis: Demonstrating Governance Skills Amidst the Pandemic

Strong governance is essential for every mission and vision to be achieved. In this age of the pandemic, leadership is one of the skills that a BSN nurse requires to save lives as well as keep themselves away from the imminent danger of getting infected and succumbing to the virus (Mahoney, 2020). Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a need for instant decision-making in emergency departments alongside normal healthcare routines due to the influx of patients across the board. With this in place, a BSN nurse with ample governance abilities and talents would need to demonstrate their capabilities in diverse ways (Pandian, 2020). This script explains ways through which these medical practitioners can reveal their management abilities as they attend to patients at the bedside throughout this pandemic.

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One of the ways through which leadership skills can be demonstrated in the current pandemic is to ensure all the personnel in charge of COVID-19 patients have access to personal protective equipment (PPE) (Phillips, 2020). This is so for the reason that the virus is contagious and these apparatus are to guard the nurses and doctors from infections as well as prevent further spread across the board. Only those who are to take care of the infected are to be provided with PPE since the resources are limited and gradually difficult to find hence the need for conserving the few that are available for each medical establishment (Portnoy, 2020). Since nurses spend the most time with the sick, they are to be issued with all the equipment they require and a few placed on standby for emergencies. With these, they can serve with utmost confidence and provide specialized care for everyone.

Amid all the uncertainties about the direction of the world due to unpreparedness for such a disaster, maintaining a positive attitude while at work is one of the ways through which a BSN nurse can exhibit their governance capabilities (Rosa, 2020). As these medical practitioners spend the longest time with the sick, they end up utilizing more of their days at the institution. For this reason, they often dread being infected, they are sometimes obliged to go under isolation to avoid infecting others, their livelihoods have been threatened at some point and the horror of the unknown aspects of the disease is even more depressing given the number of hours they are required to stay at their work stations (Eldridge, 2020). With all these challenges affecting the workforce, a stable leader is supposed to maintain the best version of themselves while encouraging their juniors as well as colleagues to perform at their best (in terms of protection for everyone and the value of care delivered) despite the problems they are facing in their daily lives.

A Proficient nursing trailblazer can also demonstrate their management skills through the facilitation of better communication equipment within the institutions. When there are appropriate apparatuses for every form of a message to be passed from one level of administration to the next, it is quite easy for the professionals to interact better among themselves besides letting the patients stay in contact with their families (Labrague, 2020). This is bound to maintain a calm working environment as most of their concerns will have been understood and significantly addressed within the shortest time (Leng, 2020). Likewise, this equipment makes it a lot easier for the nurses on duty to monitor patient progress thereby making their work stress-free in addition to having extra time for dealing with the pressure and overwhelmed mental health that the progressively busy place of work has established for the past few months.

More and more patients are being admitted to healthcare facilities across the nation. This directly translates to more people within these setups than have ever been experienced before (Barrett, 2020). Therefore, it is progressively imperative that the leaders ensure that all the available personnel is accessible at all times for the reason that it helps with the provision of care as well as better decision-making across the board. Similarly, the management in this subdivision can validate their skills by guaranteeing that there is transparency at every level when they initiate the process and present an approachable front for the rest of the specialists to take part (Dos Santos, 2020). With these at hand, it will be progressively easier to monitor all the data that comes into the facility thereby making the supervision of the pandemic a lot easier for all to feel comfortable within their surroundings regardless of how much time they have spent on it.

Additionally, the exhibition of good leadership skills in the middle of a pandemic (something that has never been witnessed in a similar capacity) in this century means creating room for the discovery of more information about the situation and how to better deal with it when handling people in various stages of infection as well as when a nurse is infected or someone within one’s circle is affected in one way or the other.

Conclusion

It is increasingly difficult to determine the direction that the situation will take in the next few weeks or months. Therefore, every nurse working from a few months ago until this minute has probably had to handle a lot of challenges, the level of which was determined by the leadership they were assigned under (Shinners, 2020). For this reason, the best leadership is one of the skills that has been in demand across the board as the hurdles that the medical facilities are enduring keep on broadening towards more unchartered waters, and humans are left looking forward to better days, weeks, and months ahead.

References

Barrett, E. S., Horton, D. B., Roy, J., Gennaro, M. L., Brooks, A., Tischfield, J., ... & Carson, J. L. (2020). Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in previously undiagnosed health care workers in New Jersey, at the onset of the US COVID-19 pandemic. BMC Infectious Diseases, 20(1), 1-10.

Dos Santos, L. M. (2020). How Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Influence the Sense of Belonging and Decision-Making Process of Nursing Students: The Study of Nursing Students’ Experiences. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(15), 5603.

Eldridge, C. C., Hampton, D., & Marfell, J. (2020). Communication during a crisis. Nursing Management, 51(8), 50-53.

Labrague, L. J., & De Los Santos, J. A. A. (2020). Fear of Covid19, psychological distress, work satisfaction, and turnover intention among frontline nurses. Journal of nursing management.

Leng, M., Wei, L., Shi, X., Cao, G., Wei, Y., Xu, H., ... & Wei, H. (2020). Mental distress and influencing factors in nurses caring for patients with COVID19. Nursing in Critical Care.

Mahoney, M. F. (2020). Telehealth, Telemedicine, and Related Technologic Platforms: Current Practice and Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nursing, 47(5), 439-444.

Pandian, V., Morris, L. L., Brodsky, M. B., Lynch, J., Walsh, B., Rushton, C., ... & Lami, L. (2020). Critical care guidance for tracheostomy care during the COVID-19 pandemic: a global, multidisciplinary approach. American Journal of Critical Care, 29(6), e116-e127.

Phillips, J. M., & Stalter, A. M. (2020). Systems Thinking for Managing COVID-19 in Health Care Systems: Seven Key Messages. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 51(9), 402-411.

Portnoy, J., Waller, M., & Elliott, T. (2020). Telemedicine in the Era of COVID-19. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, 8(5), 1489-1491.

Rosa, W. E., Gray, T. F., Chow, K., Davidson, P. M., Dionne-Odom, J. N., Karanja, V., ... & Mazanec, P. (2020). Recommendations to leverage the palliative nursing role during COVID-19 and future public health crises. Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing, 22(4), 260-269.

Shinners, J., & Cosme, S. (2020). COVID-19: Perspectives from nurses across the country. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 51(7), 304-308.