The Association between Transformational Leadership for Change and Quality Improvement Essay Paper

The Association between Transformational Leadership for Change and Quality Improvement Essay Paper

Chinwe-Ngozi Okereke
Leadership for Change

Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is a pivotal practice in healthcare settings. Organizations periodically review their performance to determine areas to improve. Successful quality improvement requires change-oriented leadership. Transformational leadership is one of the most commonly applied methods, given its associated characteristics like motivation, enthusiasm, optimism, and team spirit. Transformational leaders understand ways to engage all the employees in the change process, increasing the success of adopting the QI initiative. In the prison where I work, there have been multiple instances where transformational leadership could have been essential in realizing various QI goals to improve care quality among inmates. The Association between Transformational Leadership for Change and Quality Improvement Essay Paper

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The Association between Transformational Leadership for Change and Quality Improvement

Transformational leaders are change-oriented. According to Iqbal et al. (2020), transformational leadership creates an enabling environment to realize the identified changes. The authors define the leadership style as “a process through which leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation” (Iqbal et al., 2021, p. 263). Successful change implementation requires everyoneâ€s participation in the process. For example, adopting new healthcare technology experiences limited resistance when leaders involve nurses from the initiation phases.

Successful QI relies on leadership in a healthcare organization. Advanced practice nursing roles require time management, strategic planning, leadership, decision-making and support, problem-solving, and resource management. Transformational leaders leverage these skills to ensure that QI projects successfully address the identified practice challenges in their organizations. While working in the prison settings, I have noticed that inspirational nurse leaders motivate other practitioners and achieve better results in their departments. A primary indicator is the prevalence of medication errors. Using transformational principles, leaders register the least instances of medication errors and preventable readmissions.

Integrating Project Management and Transformational Leadership

Medication errors have been a significant challenge in my practice facility. The errors mainly occur in the form of omissions, missed doses, wrong route, wrong time, and wrong dosage. Therefore, the facility should consider installing an electronic medical record (EMR) to support drug administration and real-time updating of the patients†medical histories. Transformational leadership is essential in translating the five steps of the nursing process into QI project management. Each of the processes requires the active involvement of all project stakeholders to achieve the desired outcomes. Project managers design, plan, apply, regulate and evaluate project milestones (The Nursing Process and Project Management, n.d.).

By applying transformational leadership skills, leaders bring everyone on board with the strategies, goals, and performance indicators for each project phase. In my practice context, the QI project is in its initial phases. The involved stakeholders are currently planning the best ways to approach the change program. Given it would lead to complete migration from the paper-based medical records, all stakeholders must familiarize themselves with the new technology to reduce the chances of communication breakdowns at the implementation phase. Transformational leadership will play an essential role in achieving these outcomes. By the end of the project, the facility anticipates a 40% reduction in medication errors indicated by readmissions, adverse drug reactions, mortalities, and service satisfaction levels. In the long-term (10 years and beyond), the facility intends to achieve zero instances of medication errors. The Association between Transformational Leadership for Change and Quality Improvement Essay Paper

Conclusion

QI and transformational leadership for change are essential to healthcare organizations. Successful QI depends on how stakeholders are involved in the change implementation process. Project management and nursing can be integrated through leadership principles to help realize the best possible outcome. Integrating an EMR into the prison healthcare organization is a significant milestone towards reducing the occurrence of medication errors. However, its successful implementation and operationalization will rely on the leadership style used.

References

Iqbal, K., Fatima, T. & Naveed, M. (2020). The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Nurses†Organizational Commitment: A Multiple Mediation Model. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, 10(2020), 262-275. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ejihpe10010021.

The Nursing Process and Project Management.

Sipes, C. (2020). Project management for the advanced practice nurse (2nd ed.). Springer Publishing Company. The Association between Transformational Leadership for Change and Quality Improvement Essay Paper