This course is designed to provide you the knowledge and skills in application, evaluation, analysis, and interpretation of biostatistical data used to inform public health programs, policy, and practice. Elizabeth Pisani is an epidemiologist in public health and has a message about the role that politics has on the use of the data. View “Elizabeth Pisani: Sex, Drugs and HIV – Let’s Get Rational.” Do you agree or disagree with Pisani’s message about the role of politics in public health? 

Strengths-Based Leadership

It is relatively easy to describe our acquired expertise, but most of us struggle when asked to describe our natural talents.
—Rath, 2007, p. 21

Recognizing innate talents is critical not only for leveraging one’s own strengths, but for fostering a workplace environment in which everyone’s contributions are respected and maximized. This is valuable because “the opportunity for individuals to play to their strengths most of the time is the key factor that shows the greatest correlation to outstanding performance in the widest range of business outcomes including profits, productivity, customer satisfaction, and safety and employee retention” (Buckingham, 2011, p. 5).

Charged with the complex and considerable goal of promoting health care quality and safety, nurse leader-managers must learn how to draw upon each person’s strengths to foster collaboration toward this shared purpose.

In this Discussion, you assess your own strengths and consider how they can be applied in a health care organization to improve quality and safety.

To prepare:

• Review the Learning Resources focusing on strengths-based leadership.
• If you have not already done so, follow the instructions in Strengths Finder 2.0 to complete the online assessment and read the sections in Part II that are associated with your five top strengths.
• Consider the results of the assessment. What insights, questions, or concerns arise as you think about these results?
• Think about how your identified strengths relate to your current role as a leader-manager and to the professional contributions that you hope to make now and in the future. Give focused attention to patient safety and health care quality; how and why are your strengths valuable for promoting optimal patient outcomes and creating systems-level change?
• Evaluate strategies for applying your strengths in the health care workplace. Identify at least two that you can use to add value to a team or workgroup to improve quality and safety.

By Day 3

Post a brief description of your identified strengths and explain how and why they are beneficial in your role as a nurse leader-manager. Explain at least two strategies for applying your leadership strengths in a health care organization to improve quality and safety.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

Required Readings

Rath, T. (2007). Strengths finder 2.0. New York, NY: Gallup Press.
Part I, “Finding Your Strengths—An Introduction” (pp. 1–31)
Part II, “Applying Your Strengths” (pp. 33–172)Read Part I first, then complete the online assessment as instructed in the book. Read the sections in Part II that are associated with your five top strengths.

Note: You must purchase a new, unopened copy of this book in order to acquire the access code that you will need to complete the online assessment.

Buckingham, M. (2011). Strong leadership. Leadership Excellence, 28(1), 5.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

The author explains how strengths-based leadership creates competitive advantage for organizations. “The opportunity for individuals to play to their strengths most of the time is the key factor that shows the greatest correlation to outstanding performance in the widest range of business outcomes including profits, productivity, customer satisfaction, and safety and employee retention” (p. 5).

Cooper, H., & Cottrell, R. R. (2010). Charting your career path through clear professional values and purpose. Health Promotion Practice, 11(1), 13–15.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

This article provides direction for clarifying professional values and purpose, and using that for career development. “The importance of understanding and articulating values at an individual level is that they can assist in developing one’s unique contribution to one’s profession, just as a professional organization’s values assist in directing the organization” (p. 14).

[T]he way to create a culture of retention is, in fact, to create a culture of engagement and contribution.
—Jo Manion (2004, p. 30)

When employees feel engaged and motivated, they are often more committed to an organization. Organizational commitment is broadly defined as an employee’s intent to stay with the organization. Nurse managers can have significant influence on an organization’s culture and thereby on employee engagement and commitment.

To prepare

• Select one of the following perspectives and complete the corresponding survey for this Discussion. Do not look at the scoring directions until after you have completed the evaluation.
  • If you hold or have held a management position in your recent or present workplace, access the document, “Creating a Culture of Engagement: Manager Survey,” found in this week’s Learning Resources.
  • If you have yet to hold a management position, or would prefer to answer the survey from the perspective of an employee, access the document, “Creating a Culture of Engagement: Employee Survey,” found in this week’s Learning Resources.
• After you have completed the survey, reflect on the results. Based on score breakdown, select the culture cluster you consider the most critical to address in this workplace. Then, review this week’s media, “Recruitment, Retention, and Employee Development.” What strategies could you, as a nurse manager, employ to address this cluster?
• Consider how this culture facilitates or negates your feelings of organizational commitment.

By Day 3

Post an evaluation of a recent or past workplace by sharing the total score of your survey. Explain whether this score accurately captures the culture of this workplace. Identify the culture cluster that you consider the most critical to address, and suggest at least one intervention you could initiate to effectively change this aspect of the workplace’s culture. Explain how this culture encouraged or diminished your feelings of organizational commitment.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days using one or more of the following approaches:

• Find a colleague whose critical culture cluster is one of your stronger ones. Share a strategy for strengthening this aspect of his or her culture.
• Use authentic experiences and this week’s Learning Resources to evaluate a colleague’s intervention, offering suggestions and insights.
• Assess a colleague’s workplace. Applying what you know about your own intrinsic motivators, explain why this workplace would or would not be a good fit for you.

Required Readings

Manion, J. (2011). From management to leadership: Strategies for transforming health care (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Chapter 3, “Building Commitment: Inspiring Others to Follow” (pp. 69–114)This chapter focuses on inspiring commitment in the workplace. The author differentiates between commitment and compliance and lists the different kinds of organizational commitment.

Fasoli, D. R. (2010). The culture of nursing engagement: A historical perspective. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 34(1), 18–29.  Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Fasoli’s article evaluates the history of work engagement and its effect on nurse retention. The author analyzes the history and modern use of work engagement and explores how these are used as a framework for creating a culture of nursing engagement.

Shantz, A., & Latham, G. (2011). The effect of primed goals on employee performance: Implications for human resource management. Human Resource Management, 50(2), 289–299.  Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

This study analyzes the effects of subconscious motivation on job performance. The results reveal that someone’s subconscious can be primed to accomplish job-related goals and that HR professionals can use this to their benefit.

Vlachoutsicos, C. A. (2011). How to cultivate engaged employees. Harvard Business Review, 89(9), 123–126.  Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

This article tells the reader how to make the most out of engaged employees in the workplace. The author provides and supports with real-life examples six steps that readers can use to help them achieve their goals.

Wisotzkey, S., Bell, T. D., & Grim, R. (2011). Connect and engage for better nurse retention. Nursing Management, 42(10), 14–18.  Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
 

Smith, Turkel & Wolf (2013) Chapter 4

Summary: The purpose of the weekly reflective journal exercises is to allow for analysis, synthesis and evaluation of nursing theory using guided questions. Reflection has been referred to as a process that happens internally, privately or in isolation (Hill & Watson, 2011).  Also a useful definition of reflection has been referred to as the examination of an issue of concern, as a consequence of experience, creating clarity and meaning in terms of self, and which results in a change of perspective ( Boyd & Fales, 1983).

Directions: Complete the Reflective Journal questions presented in your Smith, Turkel, & Wolf (2013) text as defined in the course outline.  Post the responses to the questions in the D2L dropbox.

book: https://books.google.com/books?id=x8jOEKojWRQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Assignment 1 PICOT Statement and Literature 

The first step of the EBP process is to develop a question from the nursing practice problem of interest. Select a practice problem of interest to use as the focus of your research. Start with the patient and identify the clinical problems or issues that arise from clinical care. Following the PICOT format, write a PICOT statement in your selected practice problem area of interest, which is applicable to your proposed capstone project. The PICOT statement will provide a framework for your capstone project (the project students must complete during their final course in the RN-BSN program of study). Conduct a literature search to locate research articles focused on your selected practice problem of interest. This literature search should include both quantitative and qualitative peer-reviewed research articles to support your practice problem. Select six peer-reviewed research articles which will be utilized through the next 5 weeks as reference sources. Be sure that some of the articles use qualitative research and that some use quantitative research. Create a reference list in which the six articles are listed. Beneath each reference include the article’s abstract. The completed assignment should have a title page and a reference list with abstracts. Suggestions for locating qualitative and quantitative research articles from credible sources: 

1. Use a library database such as CINAHL Complete for your search. 

2. Using the advanced search page check the box beside “Research Article” in the “Limit Your Results” section. 

3. When setting up the search you can type your topic in the top box, then add quantitative or qualitative as a search term in one of the lower boxes. Research articles often are described as qualitative or quantitative.

 To narrow/broaden your search, remove the words qualitative and quantitative and include words that narrow or broaden your main topic. For example: Diabetes and pediatric and dialysis. To determine what research design was used, review the abstract and the methods section of the article. The author will provide a description of data collection using qualitative or quantitative methods. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required. https://www.guideline.gov/(week 1)