Magnet Model: Transformative Leadership Exemplar

Victoria A Atkins

James Madison School of Nursing

Nursing 471: Leadership and Management in Health Care

March 7, 2020
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Magnet Model: Transformative Leadership Exemplar

Nursing is a unique practice consisting of multiple elements based on caring, knowing,

navigating, and leading (Dimitroff et al., 2016). Without those elements, nurses and patients

would suffer. Based off the American Nursing Credentialing Center (ANCC), the Magnet model

was created to uphold the highest standards for nurses in order to give optimal care for patients.

The Magnet Model “consists of transformational leadership, structural empowerment, exemplary

professional practice, new knowledge, innovation and improvement, and lastly, empirical quality

results” ("Magnet Model- Creating a Magnet Culture", n.d). One component of the Magnet

Model that I will focus on is Transformational Leadership. Transformational Leadership

consists of an individual or group of individuals that inspire a group by “building on their

subordinates’ values, beliefs, attitudes, and motivations” (“When nurse emotional intelligence

matters”, 2018). In the following exemplar, transformational leadership will be shown by the

diligence of nurses’ motivation to keep patients and others safe.

My floor has a staffing matrix designed to support day shift needs with a tasking nurse or

as they are called at my hospital, Team Lead. She/He is responsible for helping nurses on the

floor by giving medications, hanging fluids, starting IVs, admitting and discharging patients,

running labs, and any other tasks that are needed to help the floor run smoothly. Team Leads are

a standard for day shift but are a luxury for night shift. The argument was that day shift is busier

and task heavy, warranting an extra nurse to help the floor run more smoothly. However, with

COVID-19, we have had an influx of mental health patients on our floor consisting of nutritional

protocol cases, intentional overdoses, self-harming cases, and suicidal ideation and/or homicidal

ideation. These patients require “sitters”, consisting of mental health techs and nursing care

partners to keep the patients safe and free from injury. The sitters require a thirty-minute lunch
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and a fifteen- minute break throughout their twelve-hour shift. On day shift, there is normally

two nursing care partners to help support sitter breaks and vitals, bed baths, blood sugars, and

other tasks.

Night shift has one care partner, if they do not get pulled off the floor to sit for an

incoming mental health patient. This leaves night shift nurses and the charge nurse to sit in place

of their sitters for their breaks. When there are over five sitter cases, that takes up crucial time

that the nurse needs to be on the floor for medication administration, assessments, charting, and

other tasks. This was becoming an issue when medications were consistently becoming late,

nurses were having to stay later to finish charting, phone calls for critical lab results and doctors

were being missed and delayed, and medical alerts/behavioral events were more frequent. This

put stress on the nurses, doctors, and other members of our healthcare team and other patients

were suffering because of it.

As leaders do, we night shift nurses filed complaints and advocated for extra staff on

night shift. Months of meetings, suggestion cards, and night shift persistently documenting our

events and summaries of those heavy nightshift, lead to show our floor’s management and

nursing supervisor that night shift should be entitled to a team lead. I learned that if an idea or

concept is attainable and is worth the safety and satisfaction of patients and staff, then advocacy

is the most effective form of leadership. Because of our effective leadership, night shift nurses

will have a required team lead. Since this requirement, shifts have run more efficiently and we as

nurses feel that our voice matters.

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Works Cited

Dimitroff, L. J., Tydings, D. M., Nickoley, S., Nichols, L. W., & Krenzer, M. E. (2016,
November 2). From Blank Canvas to Masterwork: Creating a Professional Practice
Model at a Magnet Hospital. Retrieved from
https://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/nrp/2016/8783594.pdf.

 “Magnet Model - Creating a Magnet Culture”. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.nursingworld.org/organizational-programs/magnet/magnet-model/.

“When nurse emotional intelligence matters: How transformational leadership influences intent
to stay”. (2018). Journal of Nursing Management., 26(4), 358–365.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12509