Picture credit: iStock

For more on this issue, go to rcni.com/nurse-morale

Readers’ panel members give their views in a personal capacity only

Leadership styles can make or break effective team working. Lighting a fire inside someone rather than underneath them is a skill often lacking in nurse managers. A top-down approach could be replaced with shared governance and flattened hierarchies, while person-centred management might include consideration of nurses’ physical and mental well-being needs, flexible shift options and adequate rest breaks. However, in the current context of staff shortages and workload pressures, the blame should not lie solely with managers.

A manager role should not be a stepping stone to something better, nor an unquestioning mouthpiece of senior management, but too often it is both. A manager should be there to run their team, ensuring the best patient care is delivered. Staff are people and part of a team, and need to be supported. I once witnessed a senior nurse tell a nurse, ‘Well, you’ll just have to cope,’ when they complained about short-staffing. The NHS’s staff are its greatest resource – but you do not always see that reflected in how they are treated.

Nurse managers can seem unapproachable. As a student, I often went to my mentor instead of my manager to raise issues. Staff morale was low and it seemed as though the ward managers did not understand the issues on the ward. Promises of more staff, help and support were never carried through, mostly due to a lack of resources. Nurse managers need to be available and work collaboratively with teams to solve issues, instead of working behind the scenes. More transparency would be welcome and would help to improve trust in management.

Nurse managers often get leadership drastically wrong. I find leadership lacking in many senior nurses I come across. Despite this being a profession built on compassion and empathy, those in senior leadership roles can oên lack these very qualities and attributes. As a newly qualified nurse, I feel I have had more formal leadership education, exposure and experience than some of the senior nurses I come across. I wonder if formal leadership education and exposure should be mandatory before nurses can even consider such roles.