Bureaucratic Leadership

NUR5325 Clinical Leadership assessment plays a very important role in the quality of patient care that is being given. Clinical leaders have a right proportion of creativity, highlighting behavior, influence, respect and support. The type of leadership style to be discussed in this paper would be bureaucratic leadership style. In clinical field, sometimes the leaders are referred to as specialists. The specialists have continuous flow of demands from the patients as well as the juniors with whom the specialist is working (Mannixet al, 2013). There is a large amount of traction. The major task which a clinical leader must undertake are :

The leader should maintain credibility with the colleagues with whom he is working. This takes whole lot of years to achieve credibility. The general public looks up to the leader as god who saves lives.

The leader should possess the quality of responding in real time. Real time experiences play an important role in making leaders. This impacts the clinical practice in a broad way.

The major challenge which is being faced by clinical leadership is the continuously evolving environment, clinical engagement in bringing clinical reform and dysfunctional clinician-management relationship. All these challenges need to be faced head on to achieve a breakthrough in this field. Bureaucratic leadership takes care that all processes being performed are superior in quality and in case of any hick-ups the specialists are there to support (De Pree, 2003).

Bureaucratic Leadership style is based on procedures and historical statistics. This does not takes in to account whether the statistic hold in the current scenario or not. What differences the bureaucratic style of leadership is that it solves problem through layers of control. They are responsible for controlling the flow of information.

The major features of a bureaucratic style leadership are:

Fixed official duties:the major task in a clinical work is broken down into smaller tasks and is assigned to the respective specialists.

Technical expertise:the qualification for being a bureaucratic leader is that they should have sound knowledge of their field. Not only just knowledge but practical relevant experience also plays a major role. Being in a clinical field, the job demands seriousness along with a good exposure in different scenarios. When one has gone through practical experiences then one can understand the importance of a second in saving a life (De Pree, 2003).

System of rules: there are two types of rules namely the behavioral and technical rules. The behavioral rules outlines the leader’s scope of working whereas the technical rules control how a particular work needs to be done and what major critical decisions need to be taken in real time.

Written documentation:the clinics maintain written records of all the patients, rules and regulations. It also contains all case studies and the decisions taken in critical situations which can be used while tackling with a grim case. The records are written so as to maintain accountability as well (Birnieet al, 2012).

Bureaucratic form of leadership is based on fixed duties and adherence to the rules and regulation of the clinics. Bureaucratic form of leadership is a structured form of leadership which consists of several components like strict hierarchy of authority where the leaders are people with relevant knowledge and experience. The major requirement of this form of leadership is also that everything has to be documented. It forms a historic document which future clinical students can use for their reference to solve clinical cases as per need (Mannixet al, 2013).

In clinics the leader of a bureaucratic style should make sure that he encourages his followers to perform their duties with utmost care. He should make sure that quality is never compromised on. He should encourage his colleagues to set high benchmark in maintaining quality rather than setting minimum safety standards. The leader should use the method of control if any of his subordinate is not able to meet the quality standards. He should ensure that the patients being attended in a particular clinic should receive at least minimum level of standards at any point in time (De Pree, 2003).

The current health system needs to undergo large scale changes to make it robust and to make it sustainable for future. Clinical leadership is a step towards this reform. The clinicians take part actively to improve the quality and safety of healthcare. It also helps in laying a path towards a better future. The clinicians need to perform collaboratively to achieve big results. It is a very sensitive field and lot of care and attention is required to achieve desired results (Birnieet al, 2012).

References

De Pree, M. (2003). What is leadership? Ch. 5. The Jossey-Bass Reader on Business Leadership. Jossey- Bass Publishers, Retrieved 5/1/08 from eBook Collection
Birnie, A. M., Hobkirk, M., & Fawcett, D. (2012). Clinical Leadership Development in Surgery: Building for the Future. Bulletin of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 94(3), 1-3.
Mannix, J., Wilkes, L., & Daly, J. (2013). Attributes of clinical leadership in contemporary nursing: an integrative review. Contemporary Nurse, 3505-3521.

OZ Assignment Helpis providing nursing assignment by the top most professional writers with the guaranteed good marks.