I had the opportunity to interview Mary Alice Cullen, a Director of Patient Care Services. She oversees the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), labor and delivery, pediatrics, maternity ward, and the women’s clinic. Mary graduated in May, 2016 with her Doctorate of Nurse Practice. Mary has always wanted to get her MSN. As she started to study to get her MSN, it opened her eyes to endless possibilities of what she could do with her degree. When she graduated with her MSN, the position that she was in opened up for her and she took on the job. As she went through her role she wanted to make more of an impact on the role and the clients and staff she was supporting. Mary decided to continue school for her Doctorate in Nurse Practice (DNP) with a concentration on Executive Doctorate in Nurse Practice, and this degree is also approved by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Her attributes are that of a caring leader, one that will work with her staff to encourage and teach them and empower them to be the best that they can be, even when they do not see that they can.
Mary does not often do hands-on care she is in an executive role. However, she does round daily. She provides support to her managers that manage the staff, in order to provide better care for the patients. Her leadership model is Kouzes and Posner, but if she is scrubbed in for surgery in labor and delivery, her transactional model side comes out. Meaning this is a time as a transactional manager, where following directions the same way every day is crucial. Mary most recently participated in a study that involved strategic planning of having single-family NICU rooms for the parents. These were her visionary plans and the hospital agreed after the research was completed, that having individualized patient rooms in the NICU, would benefit the staff and the parents of the babies.
My leadership style is very similar to Mary’s in that I lead by example and I am not afraid to do the work that my staff does. This makes a strong leader because the people who follow you will know that although you are in a position of higher authority, you will still be humble enough to do the job your staff does and be able to explain it from their side and understand the position that they are in. Knowing your staff’s job by example, allows the manager to know the timeliness of things that need to be accomplished and the ability of each worker’s caseload and what they can manage. There are seven attributes to being a good leader and Mary possesses those in her character, her track record to be given assignments and projects that have been successful and in the skills that she shows handling her staff (Baer, 2012).
References
Baer, J. (2012). Theories of leadership. In Leadership in health care (2nd ed., pp. 45-69). [Vital Source Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://campus.capella.edu/web/library/home
Source: Rosie’s Nurse Corner