The Importance of Leadership Skills in Nursing: Building Resilient Teams

Abstract

Background
The UK healthcare sector is facing a significant issue of employee burnout which has increased the employee especially nurses’ turnover rate. This research aimed to assess the importance of leadership skills in nursing regarding development of team resilience.
The objectives of this research are,
● To assess the existing leadership styles in the UK healthcare services, especially in the NHS.
● To identify the challenges faced by the nursing leaders when developing a resilient team.
● To recommend strategies to improve the effectiveness of nursing leadership in the NHS to build resilient teams.
Methods
Both qualitative and quantitative data collection has been used in this research to collect information from the primary data sources. 21 nurses from the National Healthcare Services (NHS) UK have been selected through purposive sampling as per their written consent for participating in this research. 6 close-ended and 2 open-ended questionnaires have been sent to them via email and responses were collected via email which were stored in cloud storage with limited access. All the information has been used in this research anonymously.
Results
The research has identified that age groups have no significant relationship with the perception that leadership is a fundamental skill for resilient team development (p > 0.05). For the other variables like age group and years of experience, the relationship was not significant (p > 0.05). The research found that decision-making skills followed by conflict management skills, empathy and communication skills are four important skills for resilient team development. Some challenges faced by the nurses include staff shortages, burnout, stress, inadequate training and inadequate resources. Some strategies found include offering stress management workshops and consultancy, rewards and recognition programs and a better staffing ratio.
Conclusion
The leadership skills help improve communication among team members which helps enhance team resilience and overcome the issues regarding work stress, burnout and anxiety.