Taking a Stand

Taking a Stand: Role as a Moral Agent in Reducing Health Care-Associated Infections
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Role as a Moral Agent in Reducing Health Care-Associated Infections
Introduction
Different authors have emphasized on effective leadership in health care setting; nursing leadership is pivotal as nurses form the largest discipline in the health care sector. Leadership is related to positive patient safety outcomes. It conjures up a variety of thoughts, reflection, and images. Leadership includes power, influence, followership, being dynamic, charismatic autocratic, innovative, knowledgeable, and warm among several other descriptions (Marquis & Huston, 2012).
An Overview of Leadership in Nursing
Nurse leaders are confronted with several challenges; these include the legal framework issues and ethical or moral dilemma that they face while exercising leadership in the work settings. In most cases, leadership is viewed as an optional role for nurses. However, to achieve high standards of patient care and efficiently make the necessary changes, leadership must be practiced by all healthcare personnel (Marquis & Huston, 2012).
My Role as a Moral Agent in Reducing Health Care-Associated Infections
There is growing concern about Health care-associated infections (HAIs). My role in this process will be to articulate the organizational culture of achieving clinical excellence by ensuring that we minimize the rates mortality related to health care-associated infections. It will be important to develop patient-centered care by analyzing and agreeing on what is best for the patient. Applying transformational leadership approach is important in this process; it involves conveying the end goal that we intend to achieve rather than instructing staff what should be done (Marquis & Huston, 2012).
To succeed in the process, my role will be to empower staff to promote positive work behaviors and attitude. This can be done by initiating leadership education programs that entail some of the transformation strategies that will empower staff to begin embracing some of the driving factors of a safety culture and teamwork. Arranging for in-service courses, for example, on diabetes, people can learn more about how to prevent hypoglycemia, which is one of the common health care-associated infections (Marquis & Huston, 2012).
Through a collaborative effort, different departments can work on standardized care to minimize simple cases like hospital-acquired pneumonia. My role as a nurse educator will be to educate and encourage other staff to learn how to increase patient safety by encouraging them to integrate safety practices into their daily workflow. Some of the common practices to advocate for include, good hand hygiene, incorporating the central line insertion standards and emphasizing on skin preparation using chlorhexidine for disinfection and if possible conducting daily evaluation as part of the daily routine. My other role is to enhance communication between multi- disciplinary team members and promoting mutual respect among all team members. This can be done by ensuring there are structured information exchanges opportunities like quick debriefing in case of a near miss adverse event (Marquis &am...