Background
Understanding professional roles among nurse leaders is an essential step towards achievement of collaboration at work, professionalism, and high-quality healthcare. The interview report presents interview questions and responses by Donna Gollihugh, who is a nurse leader at the West TN Healthcare, Jackson TN. The setting of the interview was the hospital’s premise, on December 15 2019. The purpose of the interview was to find out the professional role of Gollihugh in her organization, her view on current healthcare issues such as ethics, culture of safety, and career advancement. Based on the interviewee responses, a clear understanding of the role of nurse leaders in the healthcare industry will be established.
The Shadowing
Gollihugh has been working as a nurse for the last thirty-eight years. She has spent six months in labor and delivery. The nurse began her career as a normal staff nurse working as a specialist in the labor and delivery, before progressing to become a clinical coordinator in the first year of her career as a nursing professional. After career appraisal within the department, Gollihugh was promoted to become the director of the department. She has managed the organization for thirty-seven years.
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A close watch on the nurse’s activities within the department depicts different characteristics of the leader, both as a professional and as a person. The shadowing on Donna was done during the interview process, and was crucial in giving key points about the individual without necessarily having to ask: this was done through observation of her body language, and interaction with the environment including colleagues. Evidently, Gollihugh is an advocate for her patients and staff members working with her. She cares about every detail about their health as well as their personal lives. During the interview, a team member came in to inform Donna about her grandbaby. She was excited and kept asking questions about how the new born was fairing on after his birth. This character portrays Gollihugh leadership style, which is certainly democratic and servant leadership.
There was a safety huddle meeting where different heads of departments within West TN Healthcare had a conference on the topic of safety. The nature of the meeting itself was a primary informative on the character of the departmental heads, including Donna Gollihugh. The meeting was not only open for the leaders but also for any person who felt concerned about safety: this illustrates the value put on other people by leaders in the facility. The gesture showcases how they care about welfare of the people they work with in the healthcare center.
The Interview
Reasons for Choosing Nursing
The path to nursing for Donna Gollihugh began when she was a young child. She exhibited great care for everyone in her family especially her little brother who would get sick often. Donna would frequently help her brother follow his drug prescription timetable, give him company in his sick bed, and generally stay close to help him recover and heal swiftly. Gollihugh believes that her childhood experience majorly influenced her passion to pursue nursing as a profession: she grew up with the desire to make a difference in people’s lives. Nursing is all about the patient; saving their life, and making them happy alongside their families, thus, Donna committed to this course for that main reason. Additionally, she chose the profession for other reasons which most nurses share, including, space for career and professional development, and the rewarding package that comes long with the demanding profession (Wilkes, Cowin, & Johnson, 2015). Apparently, Donna has never practiced any other profession that is non-medical.
What She Loves Most About Her Job
Gollihugh is intrigued by the nature of her job for many reasons but clearly states that the people she works with are the key reason she loves her job. This response was essential for the analysis of Donna’s character, given the exact words , she used to answer the posed question: “It is hands down, the people I work with”. Analyzing the response clearly shows that despite the fact that Donna is a director, she sees the colleagues within the department as equals who have great contribution to success of her team; she avoided using the words “people who work for me.”
Organizational Culture
Donna was asked about the culture established within her department and the general organization. Gollihugh was emphatic about the type of culture she desired and chose for her team, and also believed that their way of life at work has helped them get to their current level of success. Donna believes in a culture that prioritizes patient needs as well as their welfare as well as a culture that promotes collaborations among employees who take care of each other. Gollihugh emphasized on a culture that embraces safety in all its operations because safety has an important role in healthcare in terms of mental healing of patients, prevention of physical accidents, among other benefits.
Leadership Style
Gollihugh describes herself as a team leader: she believes in team leadership style, which involves creation of a vivid picture of a team’s future (Sommer et al., 2016). The future of the team mattered most to Gollihugh to the extent that her main focus was on how to make her team grow stronger and stay motivated at work. Based on the structure of her leadership, every team member is entitled to equal treatment. No one has more privileges than the other, and the contribution of every member is valued just as highly as that of the Director. Additionally, Donna ensures that the environment within which her team works is conducive for career growth, and competitive remuneration.
Challenges in Her Leadership
Natural politics within the organization form a huge part of the challenges faced by Donna in execution of her duties as the director of her department. Politics within the firm take several forms, however, the most common ones include top leaders exerting pressure on team members to get things done their way simply because they have power; employees working together to form coalitions run by new ideas and beliefs different from the existing culture, hence trying to convince others. Therefore, based on the nature of the politics created, the implication to existing leadership and organizational culture might either be negative or positive. Donna believes that politics affect the flow of work regardless of the nature of its effects, thus, pose a substantial challenge in balancing different dynamics arising from politics with normal healthcare operations, to avoid upset of the system. Donna also states that her second most pressing challenge is resource-based in the sense that as a leader, she ought to see to it that every member of her team is well equipped at work and lacks nothing despite the strict budget she has to work every time. Balancing between the needs and demands of the team members and the available resources is a hard task for a manager, as well as important due to the dire consequences that result from non-compliance: employee dissatisfaction, low productivity, and turnovers in extreme cases ( Wilkes, Cowin, & Johnson, 2015) .
The Role of Technology in Nursing
Donna was very confident about benefits of technology in nursing. She stated clearly that embracing modern technology is the best thing that has happened to the industry. Donna believes that modern technology, especially machine learning and artificial intelligence will be a source of major disruptions within the healthcare industry (Weiss, 2018) . The inventions according to Donna will create a better platform for innovations in drugs and execution of better treatment programs for patients and diseases across the world. However, Donna still held her reservations about Artificial Intelligence given the sensitivity of patient care services: she said that as much as technology is here to help, nursing professionals and other medical officers must always be ready to step in incase of system breakdowns, cyber security issues, among many other data breaches that modern technology is prone to. Donna further stated that West TN Healthcare has made significant adjustments in aligning their services with modern technology, especially their surgery kit, and is hopeful that the future is bright for them.
Conclusion
Gollihugh’s interview was successful considering the fact that it gave several insights into the nature of the nursing profession as a leader, and how best a nurse leader can chaperone a team to achieve success consistently. Gollihugh was the most convenient interviewee due to her vast experience, a component that clearly illustrates that she is good at what she does. Gollihugh is a professional with the passion for her career as a nurse, her team at work, and her role at West TN Healthcare as a Director. Gollihugh’s interview focused more on the success stories, and other aspects pertaining to her leadership at the health facility. However, future interviews should also focus on the failure stories’ interrogation within a career history of an interviewee, to get a better understanding of their character and attitude during adverse moments. Additionally, such interviews can be useful to young professionals in the career to relate to failure and learn how to own, and grow above their failures.
References
Sommer, S. A., Howell, J. M., & Hadley, C. N. (2016). Keeping positive and building strength: The role of affect and team leadership in developing resilience during an organizational crisis. Group & Organization Management , 41 (2), 172-202.
Weiss, L. D. (2018). Private medicine and public health: Profit, politics, and prejudice in the American health care enterprise . Routledge.
Wilkes, L., Cowin, L., & Johnson, M. (2015). The reasons students choose to undertake a nursing degree. Collegian , 22 (3), 259-265.
