Nurse Manager and Nurse Officer, Assessment Example

I achieved my learning goals by interviewing the Director of Quality in our hospital. My focus of the interview was on the patient satisfaction. I used Press Ganey for our patient satisfaction questionnaires that go out routinely to patients after discharge, or post-operatively.

D.O. gave me survey results and told me that she was also responsible fro working with departmental heads in addressing certain quality issues, which stand out in the surveys. She works with the risk management department as well to determine risk areas, improve quality and patient safety.

The role of a nurse manager or nurse officer is so critical in a health care system. During my learning experience program, I learned a lot about these roles. I ensured successful learning of these roles through a daily observation of the responsibilities and experience of a director of nursing.

I achieved my learning objectives by following the supervisor as she supervised all patients at a health care facility. I noted down the activities she was doing, as she went around visiting patients.

While at the health care place, I had to document the roles of nurse and that of the nursing officer. I learned that nurse officers could also work as quality directors. As a quality director, the nurse manager is responsible for the patient care management. He or she has a responsibility not only in quality but also in safety and cost-effectiveness of the patient care on his unit. I observed how decision making on the daily practice takes place through recruiting of professional nurses.

I learned that the Chief Nursing Officer is a key decision maker in the health care system (ANA, 2012). The CNO is the ultimate decision maker and keeps a tight grip on the nursing operations within various units of the hospital. I was able to learn desirable skills of nursing managers including coordinating resources, both personnel and financial, meeting goals and organizational objectives and following rules. The manager’s role has a key element of control. Effective rewards and punishments also play a key role in for good managers (ASRN, 2012).

I had an opportunity to learn, about policy development, to monitor and regulate medication prescriptions throughout the nursing unit. I learned about this through reading and analysis of incident reports. Development of a plan based approach then followed.

I considered the roots of quality control, which has been the norm in the health care management. A quality director in the health care has a role to connect employees to the real world. The quality director has a responsibility in the patient care management plan. He or she directs and coordinates a team, which has a function of monitoring separate departments.  Therefore, quality directors must build and maintain collaborative relations. According to Demings (2012), collaboration is critical to the success.

I learned that an excellent healthcare leader should be able to bring collaboration to all people in an organization. Quality leaders have overcome the deficiency of tending to flatten organizational goals, which removes various support services necessary for health care system.  This has been through the appointment of teams to appoint leaders: a doctor, a nurse and a representative from each department in the hospital. The quality director also promotes training goals for middle managers and lower support staff with an interest in management participation (Taylor, 1915).

I made my learning experience easy by entering daily activities into my nursing journal. Every time I followed the nursing manager, I made sure that I carried my journal. It was difficult to capture the relevant nursing skills, but my constant hard work helped me a lot. I was able to understand the nursing experience, and I hope to understand it more.

References

American association of nurses. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.com

Demings, W. Edward. (1960). Japanese management styles using kaizen, agreeable leadership by all members of the organization. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mentoring Benefits. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.asrn.org/nurse-mentoring.html

Taylor, F. (1915).The principles of scientific management. New York: Harper & Brothers.