Nurse Management

Nursing management is the leadership within a hospital, nursing home, out patient and in patient services, they guide the culture, quality and environment. The nurse manager is accountable 24 hours a day, for all aspects of their department, which includes but not limited to: staffing, budgets, risk management, quality of patient care and safety. The role is huge, is forever developing and changing. The expectations of the organization is demanding and often you will find yourself negotiating for better staffing and a more realistic budget.

Updated: Mar 14, 2020

Nursing Management is the leadership who performs governance and decision-making within a nursing environment. Managers have the responsibility to guide staff towards achieving goals by assigning responsibilities and expectations to the right person, in the right role and the right job. Making sure excellent, high quality health care is delivered.

Ensuring that the organization goals are achieved is one of the main functions of the role, discouraging performance, which does not achieve these goals.

Management Encourages staff to work together as a team, and discourages individuals who are work to their own agenda, which can hinder organization goals.

Management is considered the art of getting things done through people. Management is the science of systematically studying individual behaviors and their approach to problem solving, time management and critical thinking within the nursing environment.

There are different levels of managements, top-level managers for example board of directors, mid level management director of nursing services, and finally front line managers who work on the floor.

Work Environment

Nurse managers organize and direct the activities of nursing units in hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities. They perform a variety of administrative activities and ensure that all nurses in their units provide high-quality care to patients.

Managers in the healthcare environment are responsible for overseeing the budget for the department or unit, this includes monthly budget review, reporting to budget meetings and providing rationale if not meeting the budget.

Staffing units or departments is one of a managers priorities, from hiring, promoting to making sure all staff are on the same page.

Nurse manages have to make sure they are up to date on all health care changes and initiatives, sharing new information with the staff as deemed necessary.

Nurse managers should be a role model, the culture and safety of any unit or department is set by the manager. Their responsibility is huge with managers have 24 hour accountability for everything within their department.