Fostering leadership and a positive learning culture by supporting skilled nurses

Julia (@juliafairhall3) is the trust’s deputy director of nursing. Her portfolio of labor focuses on quality, patient safety and staff development. Julia’s passions are community nursing, learning and development, and psychological safety. Julia is a Qualified District Nurse and Queen’s Nurse and a Florence Nightingale Foundation Emerging Leader Fellow for 2021. Julia is passionate, motivated and believes very strongly in visible and compassionate leadership and its importance within the workplace.

Over the last 18 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the NHS to an extent that’s now showing significant impact on each resources and staff when it comes to health and wellbeing, with particular emphasis on the mental safety of staff and their ability to proceed to consistently providing key services. In England, the Chief Nursing Officer in March 2021 announced the introduction of the Professional Nurse Advocate (PNA) role, which is a leadership and advocacy role designed to support nurses in ensuring protected and effective practice including using corrective supervision. As the PNA program begins in June 2021, I shall be reflecting on the importance of a task aligned with compassionate leadership on this blog.

Providing high-quality, compassionate healthcare is a priority for the NHS. Compassionate leadership provides a shared focus, resulting in shared responsibility for the delivery and delivery of quality care (West et al. 2014). Compassionate leadership brings together an ethos of making a positive, supportive learning environment for employees; resulting in staff modeling a caring, supportive environment for patients, which further contributes to providing high-quality care to our patients (West 2017).

Compassionate leadership adds caring and kindness to collaborative and sharing leadership, which highlights the underlying values ​​and practices which can be necessary to each staff and patient outcomes. The most significant element of this leadership style is the necessity for adaptability of people, teams and organizations. Using this approach results in the creation of structures that consistently strive to enhance quality and learn from mistakes together. Inclusive leadership emphasizes the importance of each “establishing and maintaining consistent, authentic interactions and relationships that engage and empower diverse people on teams to focus on patients and lead innovation” (West 2017).

During my journey at PNA, my personal learning was extensive and allowed me to reflect on my role, my leadership values, and the importance of health and well-being coupled with self-awareness. I imagine the PNA role is important for nurses to recuperate from the unprecedented events of the last 18 months, which have had a big impact on the NHS, workload, demand and capability. The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the mental health of nurses as they grapple with the emotional consequences of the pandemic on patients and their families. It could be fair to confess that we’re only just starting to see these consequences. The PNA role signifies that we now have qualified nurses who can support interventions that support and strengthen the resilience of our staff, whilst also working in an environment with a positive learning culture, thus contributing to the delivery of top quality patient care and improved staff health and well-being.

West, M.A., Eckert, R., Steward, K., and Pasmore, W.A., 2014.Developing collective leadership in healthcare (volume 36). London: The Royal Trust.

West, M.A. and Chowla, R., 2017. Compassionate Leadership for Compassionate Healthcare. IN Compassion (pp. 237-257). Routledge.

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