The Need for Nursing Leadership in Complex Adaptive Systems

Introduction
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a leader is defined as “the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2013). Though there is a definition for what a leader is, people still have different ideas to what a leader should be and how he or she should act. There has never been a concrete idea of what a leader is; the only thing we know is that this person is the one in charge of the unit. We look at characteristics of those people we see as leaders and use those attributes to compare other people to see if they are able to be as good as or even better than those aforementioned leaders. We have to keep in mind that in different situations, leaders must do different tasks which indicates the need for different qualities. This is especially true in the hospital or other healthcare settings. Though it may be similar to other companies, it differs because of the continuous change it has to go through the new technology, innovation in techniques and new medical treatment plans made every day. In this paper, I will be discussing complex adaptive systems, especially in regards to the healthcare setting as well as the leadership necessary for these systems.
What is a complex adaptive system (CAS)?
A complex adaptive system is entity of networks and connections. It can “learn and adapt to change over time” which can change the “structure of the system” (Clancy, Effken, Pesut, 2008). It contains twelve elements: autopoesis or self-regenerization, open exchange, participation in networks, fractals, phase transition between order and chaos, search for fitness peaks, nonlinear dynamics, sensitive dependence, attractors that limit growth, strange attractors of emergence...

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