The Most Profound Leadership Issue, Essay Example

The most profound leadership issue that has impacted my life was when I was provided with the opportunity to apply one of the skillsets that is often left out of a respiratory therapist’s regular practice, intubation. As a respiratory therapist I consider myself a mentor of individuals that struggle with respiratory and heart problems. During one of my consults in the emergency room a code blue was prompt to arrival with an estimated time of five minutes. Since the emergency doctor that was on call was busy attending a code brain in the ICU I took the leadership to intubate the patient since he was turning blue as a result of his lack of oxygen. I asked two technicians to hold the patient down for me and quickly applied all of my intubation skills taking special consideration of the fact that this was a pediatric patient that had a very vulnerable esophagus. The patient was still in shock after the intubation but through the leadership I took that day I was able to get him breathing and worked together with the nurses and technicians leading all of us to success.

A constant issue that often propagates throughout my workplace, the intensive care unit, is that of inexperienced respiratory therapists treating patients that have a will that states they do not want to continue their lives by the use of mechanical breathing. This is a constant issue because as these new therapists engage with their patients and their families, they often feel a great burden being denied the possibility of continuing their lives because of a decision the patients have made. As a result, I often have to apply ethical leadership in order to make them understand that following what the patient desires is the right thing to do and that it should not be overlooked just because one feels that they should continue living. With this in mind I have often come to observe that they dedicate a lot of time and effort to those patients that do want to live at any cost and devote themselves to treating them with the best care possible.

A business problem that recently came up within my company was that of electronic medical record implementation. This seems to be the future of medicine but has cost a great deal of both time and money to the hospital. One of the biggest problems that electronic medical records brought up was in the pediatric field and in dealing with pediatric patients. Often, these new electronic systems have been set up efficiently for adults but overlook the fact that pediatric patients are not “young adults.” What I mean by this is that the calculations and type of care that is delivered to pediatric patients is much different and therefore requires various variants that are not included within these new systems. As a result of this, I had to implement some conversion skills into different cardiovascular and respiratory calculations that are used and also taught physicians that treated pediatric patients within my hospital how to similarly apply these techniques. As a result of this we have been able to save a lot of time while treating pediatric patient and have increased productivity with the efficient implementation of this new electronic system.

A technological tool that has recently been introduced to many physicians and personnel that has aided in making decisions faster and more efficiently is that of a mobile application known as Epocrates. This nifty application has been nothing but effective due to the great amount of resources it has. The people that have experienced the greatest benefit out of this application are those in the emergency department as this application allows them to rapidly check information in order to find: drug interactions, pill id, dose calculations, different sorts of tables, and accessible contact information about different manufacturers. This in turn allows nurses to double check just in case a doctor may have prescribed two different drugs that might interact negatively with each other, or revise the dosage that has been prescribed to any given patient. This application also allows physicians to know the pills that a patient is taking when they do not know the exact ingredient that is in them and as a result makes patient care faster and more efficient.

Being a respiratory therapist I am completely devoted to my work as I love what I do but often take the time to cultivate my other passion which is art. In recent times, the global business environment has precipitated several occurrences in the world of art in the region I live in. With the new technological advances artwork in other countries has been modernized and the result is a new form of artwork known as action painting. Through this artwork, the artist compiles various scenes from similar movies and makes them abstract and introduces a new soundtrack. This revolution has inspired a digital gallery that has opened in a museum near my home. In a similar way, an artist in Greece has created this gallery of people projected in giant screens that seem to come back to life. This form of artwork has also inspired many artists near my area and has caused museums to seek out in order to acquire these galleries for display. Moreover, this has created various job opportunities for young cinematic producers to work together with artists on small projects.