Over the past 30 years, the nurses' roles have advanced from the doctors' assistants to being integral members of the healthcare providers’ team, having greater responsibly of saving lives. One outstanding nursing leadership roles is the head nurse position, who takes the role of ensuring quality care is provided to patients. Besides their direct purpose of providing patient care services, the head nurse undertakes several administrative duties. In many healthcare centers, head nurses are usually in charge of one department, managing and staying accountable for junior nurses' performance.
Head nurses are entitled to three essential responsibilities. First, they ensure safe care delivery through the supervision of nursing team members and familiarizing them with the medical profession's safety standards and healthcare facility ( Weberg et al., 2018 ). The other role is keeping evidence-based practices within the department. Head nurses have to help maintain the department's performance reports and reading professional nursing publications. Third, head nurses have the responsibility to monitor the nursing team under their respective departments to assure optimum quality standard care delivery to their patients. Head nurses should address patients' and junior nurses' complaints appropriately to achieve high-quality clinical practices.
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The process of acquiring the required skills for a head nurse is quite challenging but rewarding. An aspiring head nurse needs to pursue a Bachelor of Science in nursing degree, with a complete understanding of the NURS 408 leadership and management course. They have a typical requirement of at least five years of nursing experience. Head nurses are required to portray a specific trait of nursing for them to achieve better nursing leadership. They should have the ability to multi-task, focusing on quality and safety elements of improvement for both patients and nurses ( Weberg et al., 2018 ). Multi-tasking skills help manage the general performance and interact simultaneously with various levels within and outside the department and meet the required standards by the entire health centers with ease. Second, the head nurse contains a high level of understanding and appreciating human diversity since the deals with thousands of people from different cultures. Another trait is a high level of care since they are generally dealing with people's health issues where patients need to be treated with care and love.
References
Weberg, D., Mangold, K., Porter-O'Grady, T., & Malloch, K. (2018). Leadership in Nursing Practice: Changing the Landscape of Health Care . Jones & Bartlett Learning.
