Nurses lead in many ways:
- By example: As role models, demonstrating the values and behaviours expected as registered nurses.
- Care delivery: Ensuring service users receive high quality, evidence-based, person-centred care.
- Teams of people: Planning and coordinating others within the nursing team and alongside the multi-professional team. Ensuring the right care, by the right people with the right skills, to achieve the best outcomes.
- Change and practice development: Working across boundaries to promote and enable the highest levels of nursing practice.
As a newly registered nurse (NRN), you are expected to lead by example and take the lead in delivering care for those in your charge. You have demonstrated the knowledge and understanding needed and achieved the required skills and proficiencies. Now you are putting these into practice and consolidating what you have learnt.
You will now take responsibility and accountability for the care you provide. Throughout this process, you will build confidence in ensuring that care meets patients’ needs. You will also be expected to question and challenge constructively when appropriate, advocating both for those in your care and for your profession, while promoting excellence in practice.
To develop as a leader, you will need to engage in activities that support and promote the skills and values of effective leadership. An effective way of doing this is to recognise and embrace the importance of followership.
Followership can be simply defined as the act of supporting and respecting a particular person or set of ideas. It involves aligning yourself and your values with another, while also enabling your own growth and development through that relationship
In health, as in other organisations, there is a growing recognition of the importance of followership in contributing to the goals and outcomes of the organisation at all levels.
As an NRN, you have the opportunity not only to be a responsible and engaged follower within your work environment, but to learn and develop the skills and attributes of leadership that you will need as you progress in your career.
You should:
- Identify role models in your team leaders and reflect on how their skills, knowledge, approaches, responses to situations all combine to create positive team engagement and good outcomes for patients.
- Access learning opportunities that focus on teamwork and reflect on how you can utilise the knowledge and skills from the learning activity.
- Engage in reviewing activities that monitor and evaluate care; handover, audits, reviewing standards and practices.
To plan you career have a look at the RCN careers resources.