Nurse Empowerment: Why Bother?

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at why the empowerment of nurses will benefit not only the nurses, but the health care industry and what can be done to promote this empowerment. Specifically, the paper looks at the measures and changes that must be made in jobs, organizational styles, and workplace protocols to lead to empowerment.

From the Paper:

"Exceedingly rapid technological progress has resulted in a change in our human resources and human activities environment. There have of course been changes within the healthcare environment for both licensed and unlicensed providers of care. These changes have required most workers to do more with less and place a greater emphasis on teamwork with independent decision making for each worker involved, no matter what their scope (Barker, 1990). All healthcare delivery systems are seeing dramatic changes in their manning and their organizational ladders. In order for all these changes to be managed effectively without any change in provision of quality healthcare, leaders and managers must understand how these changes and stresses affect workers' attitudes. The issues of leadership style and work related empowerment have become catch words but actually represent very important ideas (Douglas, 1995). That is fundamentally positive, referring to solutions rather than to problems and is dynamic in nature, power is taken over and given away, power is shared. Power is usually associated with a negative connotation there is an association with hierarchy, authoritarianism, and generally with the restriction of a person's freedom of action. Empowerment is an abstract concept. It is especially important as personnel resources are not being increased but rather decreased. This represents a change in the delivery of care and will require a significant transition in the nurse-manager's leadership style to help subordinates accept the adjustment in work and their new levels of productivity."

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• Persuasive Essay # 101935 : "The Empowerment of Nurses"

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