Enhancing Nursing Quality of Care through Integrated of Professional Development for Nursing Staff: A Systematic Review of Best Practices and Lessons Learned

Abstract

Background: Professionalism in healthcare organizations is vital to boost workforce productivity, and raise care quality for the population, especially during emergencies. One of the recent trends in healthcare organizations is remote leadership with the development of COVID-19. Thus, the experience of remote team leadership in healthcare and the corresponding use of leadership strategies present additional topics for discussion to determine the best practices for such an approach.
Aim: The purpose of this research is to understand the key issues and concerns in the remote delivery of healthcare services and to especially examine leaders that were nurses at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Method: A systematic analysis of ten studies concerning remote leadership of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic was performed. Such papers involved various designs, including literature reviews and discursive papers, making the studies more diverse in their view of the leadership practices, issues and effects.
Results: The emergent themes are trust, communication, and leadership style in environments of geographical distance. The psychological connection with the leaders and members, daily meetings and self-evaluation and empathic behaviors were stressed regarding to reducing such feelings and pressures. Nurses’ experiences with resource scarcity and ethical boundaries were also described; the topics for future discussion of the nurses’ professional community and calls for the improvement of the organization of future nurse activity in healthcare crises were identified.
Conclusion: Telecommunications and remote work are a crucial and indispensable aspect in those attempts to preserve morale and deliver high quality of care to patients in healthcare organizations. Even in the face of certain exigent circumstances such as the COVID-19 crises, the use of strategies based on empathy, communication as well as trust can go a long way in enhancing leaders and their followers. More studies have to be executed in order to understand the effectiveness and continuity of those leadership approaches in the future.