Whether you’re at the start of preparing for your future career in nursing or already have experience working as a registered nurse, it’s clear to see that nursing is an ideal career choice for anybody interested in a career where they can make a difference to the lives of others, enjoy great career progression opportunities, and experience highly rewarding work every day.
When you are qualified and licensed as a registered nurse, you can choose from countless opportunities to improve your career and work your way up the career ladder or into different specialty areas to shape the ideal career path for you. For many nurses, the ultimate goal is to work in a leadership role within the healthcare industry.
Nurse leaders are required in a range of different healthcare environments to lead teams of healthcare professionals and make sure that healthcare environments are managed effectively. If you’re interested in working in this role, it’s worth knowing what the most desirable qualities are for getting into this career successfully.
Empathy
Whatever role you end up taking on in the world of nursing, empathy is one of the most important qualities for any nurse to have. As a nurse leader, you may no longer be required to work at the bedside and demonstrate empathy directly to patients as much compared to a registered nurse, but in this role, empathy is a hugely important quality that will help you become a better advocate for patients and a more approachable boss to other healthcare professionals.
Empathy is a quality that allows you to put yourself in the shoes of others as a nurse leader, whether you are tasked with making an important decision on behalf of the patients or are dealing with a workplace dispute between employees. Online DNP leadership programs from Baylor University will prepare you to apply key nursing qualities such as empathy to your advanced role as a nurse leader.
A higher level of empathy is needed, especially for those who work and care for seriously ill patients in critical conditions. For example, the critical care nursing role‘s responsibilities include delivering healthcare to the patients in intensive care units of hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Critical care nurses often show a readiness to care for the patients and provide emotional support for their families.
Communication Skills
The best nurse leaders are often people who are naturally good at communicating well with others. In the role of a nurse leader, it’s important to prioritize clear communication and make sure that you are not only communicating well with others but providing your team with all the resources that they need to improve communication with one another.
As a registered nurse, you will already be aware of the importance of excellent communication skills whether you’re providing patients with more information about their care or updating a colleague about a patient’s condition. In the role of nurse leader, communication becomes even more important since you will be giving important instructions that can have a significant impact on patients.
Organization
Nurses need to be incredibly organized in order to do well in their choice of career. As a registered nurse, chances are that you have already been able to fine-tune your organizational skills as you’ve successfully learned to manage your time while working with multiple patients and on a range of different tasks.
If you want to get into a leadership position as a nurse, improving your organization skills even further is a worthwhile investment of your time. The more organized and methodical you can become, the better, since nurse leaders have a lot to juggle at any one time.
Compassion
A compassionate nurse leader will not only be able to build better relationships with the healthcare professionals on their team but will often be the best type of person for this role when it comes to patient advocacy and making the best decisions in terms of patient care, wellbeing, and satisfaction.
Most nurses are no strangers to compassion; in fact, many people who decide to become nurses do so because they have a high level of compassion for other people and want to get into a role where they can focus on using their energy to help others and make a difference to the lives of their fellow humans each day.
Mental Toughness
A high level of mental toughness is something that all nurses need to develop throughout their careers. Nurses are often some of the toughest people that you’ll meet; they need to be as this job is not for the faint-hearted, and nurses are tasked with dealing with situations that the general public is simply not privy to.
When working as a nurse leader, it’s important that you are mentally strong enough to deal with the many challenges of this role. You will not only need to stay mentally strong for yourself, but also because you will be in a position where employees are going to look to you for support, advice, and inspiration.
Mentorship
Nurses who work in management and leadership positions will often take on the responsibility of teaching and mentoring nursing students and nurses who are new to this career path. As the more experienced nurse, you will need to be highly skilled at working with other people who need support and mentorship to get them off to the best start in their career.
Whether you’re offering support and advice to newly qualified nurses or working alongside student nurses on clinical placements to offer supervision and mentorship, creating a culture of learning and making sure that they are accessible to others when support and advice is needed is a key part of this role.
Dedication
Finally, all nurses know just how important their job is and that it’s crucial they are dedicated to showing up and doing their best every day. Nurse leaders should lead by example when it comes to dedication; in this role, you will need to be committed to providing the best standards of care for your patients and developing a good working environment for employees.
When you are working at this level of nursing, you’ll not only be responsible for patient care, but also for the satisfaction, resources, and work environment of healthcare employees that work under your leadership, so it’s crucial to be dedicated to always doing the right thing.
Nurse leadership is a worthwhile career aspiration for registered nurses who want to take their career to the next level. In this role, these qualities are essential for any nurse leader to succeed.