Photo By David Vergun | Soldiers interact during a break at the Col. (Ret.) CJ Reddy Leadership Course, held...... read more read more
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WASHINGTON (Army News Service, March 29, 2016) -- When most people think of nurses, they think of them at a bedside checking on patients and assisting doctors. But real effective nurses do much more than that, said Maj. Lakisha Flagg.
They need to know how to work collaboratively with medical specialists across the spectrum, advocate for patients, point possible improvements out to supervisors, resolve issues, and influence patient outcomes, Flagg said.
Doing all those extra things takes initiative and good leadership, said Flagg, who is an Army Nurse Corps fellow and action officer for the Col. (Ret.) CJ Reddy Leadership Course. A portion of that course took place in the Pentagon, March 24, where she and others spoke.
All Soldiers "have the potential to make positive changes by exercising good leadership," she added, even outside the combat arms branches.
Capt. Stephen Krutko, an instructor at the Army Medical Department Captains Career Course, said medical personnel contribute to Army readiness by ensuring patient care is delivered in the most efficient and high-quality manner available, particularly to the warfighter in the combatant commands.
But medical personnel in theater quite often do so much more than that, he offered. They help the Army and America build strategic partnerships with other countries through global health engagements, he said.
Having that strategic, as well as tactical focus, builds heavily on crafting good leadership skills, he said. A doctor or even a medic has the power to impact world relationships.
Capt. Jose Mendoza said that his job, as chief of Nursing Services at Dilorenzo Tricare Health Clinic here, requires a high level of leadership skills.
"Every day I'm leading people on my staff, emphasizing quality of care patients should be receiving, safety, customer service support and medical readiness," he said.
"What basically sets us apart from civilians is readiness," he added. "We must be ready to deploy in a matter of hours."
Mendoza spoke from experience, having deployed to Iraq and caring for Soldiers on the battlefield. He agreed with Krutko about the importance of the positive impact global engagement has for America and how one person can make a huge impact.
Capt. Mallory McCuin, clinical nurse officer-in-charge of labor and delivery at Evans Army Community Hospital in Fort Carson, Colorado, said that she stays very busy working in an OB/GYN unit.
It's not just about delivering babies, she said. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes collaboration that has to go on between nurses, doctors and midwives.
"We have a lot of autonomy in labor and delivery," she said. "We're expected to have a huge knowledge base and know how to manage delivery. So we spend about 95 percent of the time with the patient monitoring them and keeping an eye on the baby and the mom and ensuring their stable and prepared for safe delivery.
"We're first on the scene if something is going wrong," she added. Doing all of that involves leadership. "You've got to be assertive and comfortable addressing the providers when you see there's something wrong. You have to be proactive and a strong advocate for patients. So we use leadership every day."
She noted that being a good leader can also be a humbling experience as "you've got to recognize your strengths and your weaknesses and you have to recognize that in your subordinates in order to help encourage growth and ensure you can effectively lead them."
Besides that, a good leader needs to be willing to take criticism. "I live off critiques. I've molded my leadership style based off suggestions. I'm always continuously growing. There's always things you can make improvements on."
Four or five decades ago, "a nurse was a nurse, a doctor was a doctor," said Dr. Jonathan Woodson, assistant secretary of Defense for Health Affairs as he addressed course participants. Many of today's medical specialties and technologies didn't exist back then, he said, "so it was much simpler to administer care on a local basis and we didn't quite need enterprise management in order to increase economies of scale."
Enterprise management is a strategic line of effort Woodson has taken for the past several years since assuming his post, he said. It includes "creating economies of scale, decreasing variability, knowing where the dollars are going, providing common medical platforms, common business tools that allow us to do our jobs more effectively. We've got to do that," he said.
ABOUT THE CJ REDDY COURSE
The five-day course was started in 1992 as a leadership development program for the Army's most promising lieutenants and captains in the Nurse's Corps. This was the first year that the course was opened to junior officers across the entire Army Medical Corps. The course is also open to medical personnel across the DOD.
The course features a number of high-level speakers, such as the Army's surgeon general, as well as top leaders from across the Department of Defense and other agencies. While some of these leaders are from the medical field, others are not. For example, a lieutenant general might talk about the importance of mission command and how the medical corps plays a small but significant role in that.
| Date Taken: | 03.27.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 04.13.2016 17:03 |
| Story ID: | 195311 |
| Location: | DC, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, US |
| Web Views: | 139 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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