Charge Nurse Nursing

Addressing the Learning Needs of A Charge Nurse

As nurses we all know the complexities of working with many individual personalities while trying to provide excellent patient care to extremely ill clientele. There is nothing that can make or break your nursing experience like having a great charge nurse to back you, and provide a wealth of knowledge and resources for you in times of conflict and accord. Many hospitals employ the use of charge nurses, but there have never been any set guidelines that distinguish the duties and role of the charge nurse (Connelly, Yoder, & Miner-Williams, 2003). As we have learned from various research studies, patient outcomes are greatly influenced by adequate staffing and nurse satisfaction rates so it is

This topic is of significance, due to the need to have nurse leaders that can adequately supervise, problem solve and delegate, therefore keeping the unit running efficiently. When the charge nurse is not adequately prepared to function in the role, problems on the unit may arise. Background literature review on this topic revealed a correlation in excellent nursing leaders enhancing nurse satisfaction which then led to better patient outcomes (Cummings, G. G., MacGregor, T., Davey, M., Lee, H., Wong, C. A., Lo, E.,

The study gives the example for the question, what would be your top three needs to help you be successful in the role of charge nurse? The data showed that there were three categories that emerged consistently. These categories were, 1) The development of leadership skills, 2) Learning to manage others behaviors, and 3) The creation of a healthy work environment. Each of these categories had a theme. For the development of leadership skills, the themes that emerged were, critical thinking (n=1), prioritizing or multitasking (n=4), communications skills (n=5), delegating (n=6) and knowing your resources (n=7). The n assigned to the themes was derived from the number of times this response was submitted. For the remaining objectives in the survey, the answers were categorized in the same fashion and grouped and assigned a number to the frequency of the themes. An explanation of the data and results for the study was very thorough, it was explained in an organized and direct fashion. The results collected from the survey were overwhelmingly similiar and consistent amongst the charge nurses from the different