Leadership Observation Journal Entry

Leadership Observation Journal Entry

Typically a busy day on a Medical /Surgical Unit leaves a nurse so busy attending to her patients, orders, families, lab work, and keeping up with the diagnostic tests that patients need to have done, that there is little time to see what others are doing, much less your clinical coordinator or the operations manager.

Observing the chaotic day of a clinical coordinator made me see how many roles she portrays and how important she is to the equilibrium on our unit. She is consistently interrupted with phone calls, staff call outs, that now changes the assignment for the day her responsibility is now to get coverage for the call out, and has to use some creativity if she is unable to fill the gap. She attends bed meetings with the operations manager, and is responsible for adequate staffing on the unit, which depends on transfers in, discharges, admissions, and post op patients, so she needs to be aware of what is going on on the unit to be able to plan accordingly.

She is also looked upon to solve situations that arise during the day concerning patient’s needs, requests, family issues, staff issues with other staff, and unacceptable work ethics by staff members.

Frequently the clinical coordinator is found helping the staff with timely discharges, sending patients to the unit or out to another facility for higher care needs than we can provide.  She collaborates with the physicians as far as protocols and expectations that will keep our communication with them open for a smooth running day.

Upon scheduling the assignment for the day and reassessing it for every shift, she is often met with resistance by other staff members regarding, admissions, and transfers, she is fair and delegates well and can rationalize her decision when challenged.

Within her very busy day portraying many different roles, from nurse, leader, charge nurse, role model, she also is responsible for completing the staff schedule by the date it is to be posted, and having adequate staffing for each shift. She attempts to be creative when filling in gaps, and uses rewards, like a week end off for working extra day, shift or coming in early.

...