Through out this assignment the practitioner is going to explore introduction of a new screening tool within a care home for people with learning disabilities and mental health issues. The practitioner will introduce what screening tool will be used and the reason it has been introduced. They will then go on to discuss what role they had during the introduction and implantation of the screening tool. The practitioner will discuss the difference between the manager and the leader and discuss management and leadership styles, emotional intelligance, as well give a brief summary on the difference between transformational and transactional leaders. The practitioner will introduce what type of leadership role their team leader adopted and briefly discuss the managers role in the implementation of the MUST screening tool. It will look what impact it has on management and leadership during its introduction. The practitioner will then go onto explore positives and negatives of having this type of leader and the impact it had to the team and what role team work played in the introduction of the tool i.e team dynamics and staff morale and did any of these have an impact on the leader.
For the purpose of this study the practitioner will be using the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) and recommendations from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) report, Time to listen: In care homes – Dignity and nutrition inspection programme 2012. The practitioner will be highlighting the importance of introducing a fluid and food intake chart into a care home environment. ‘Thousands of patients are annually starved in the midst of plenty, from the want of attention to the ways which alone make it possible for them to eat’ (Nightingale, 1859). The MUST tool was developed by the Malnutrition Advisory Group, a committee of BAPEN and it has been regularly reviewed since its launch in 2003. The CQC support BAPEN and recommend it use of the screening tool to try and prevent the malnutrition of services users in care homes as when the conducted a study, it was found that malnutrition and dehydration are main concerns in the care of elderly patients and the occurrence of both is alarmingly frequent (CQC, 2012)
The role the practitioner will be taking is the role of a team member who will be working alongside the team leader. The team leader will be responsible for the introduction of the screening tool and they will be reporting to a manager throughout the introduction of the screening tool and together they will be addressing any problems that arise. Before the MUST screening tool was introduced to the care home there was several team meetings and at these meeting members of the team were given clearly defined roles. The manager along with the team leader and the team members, attended several training sessions on how to use the training tool effectively. The management even had arranged for these sessions to be done over several shift patterns to ensure that everyone had, had adequate training. It as at these meeting that the service users who would most benefit from the screening tool were identified and it was agreed that a person centred approach would be used in this implementation. McCormack (2004, p. 36) states the approach as ‘the need for nurses to move beyond a focus on technical competence and requires nurses to engage in authentic humanistic caring practices that embrace all forms of knowing and acting, in order to promote choice and partnership in care decision-making’.
Before the practitioner goes on to explain what type of management and leadership it would be beneficial for the reader to understand the differences between management and leadership and give brief descriptions of the different types of management and leadership styles. Kotter (1990) states that a manager is more concerned with transaction were as a leader is more concerned with transformation. A management role is more focused on
