Essay Critical Awareness of Current Issues and Challenges in Health Care Practice – Leadership Strategies and Approaches – Essay Writing Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Module Learning Outcomes
Learning Outcome 1 
Demonstrate a critical awareness of current issues and challenges in health care practice and appraise the role of clinical leadership in developing innovative approaches to effective problem solving and decision making in response to these challenges.

Learning Outcome 2
Explore and evaluate relevant leadership strategies and approaches that can be used to manage safe and responsive care and critically discuss their relevance, through the introduction of the concept of clinical governance.

Learning Outcome 3
Critically review the role of leadership with reference to the process of working collaboratively and effectively with different professional and multi-disciplinary groups, respecting the principles of equality and diversity.

Assessment Brief: 
Write a reflective essay based on your SWOT analysis (formative assessment) demonstrating insight into your leadership potential. You are expected to choose one strength and one weakness from your SWOT analysis and write a reflective account of how they have been demonstrated in practice. You will also need to identify a development plan to address your chosen weakness. 
You will need to make reference to leadership theory and relevant current health and social care issues (e.g. NHS Outcomes Framework, Francis Report, King’s Fund, Leading Change Addding Value, NHS Long Term Plan etc).
Your SWOT analysis should be included as an appendix. You have a word limit of 1,500 words. 

Essay Structure
1.Introduction (150 words). An introduction generally need to answer these 3 questions.
a.What? The introduction must begin by clearly explaining what the essay is about. This section needs to explain in your own words what is required in the assignment brief given above.
b.How? The second part of the introduction need to outline how the essay is structured.
c.Why? An introduction needs to articulate why the topic under consideration is of significance.

2.Body of essay 
This could be separated into sections to ensure you cover all the required material. The following is a suggested format though you are encouraged to be creative and sequence your work in the most logical way. 

1.Discussion on Leadership (400 words)
Define leadership within the context of the NHS and specifically nursing. Incorporate recent events within the Health Service (eg Keogh, Berwick Report and Francis Reports, NHS Long Term Plan etc) to the need for leadership. Continue this by exploring relevant leadership theories and relate this to nursing practice and working within Multi-Disciplinary Teams (Learning outcomes 1 & 3). 

2.Reflection on your own leadership skills and style. (600 words)
a.Start with a general overview of your preferred leadership style and rationale for your choice
b.Briefly discuss the situation in practice in which you demonstrated your strength. Don’t go into too much clinical detail, remember the essay is about leadership so you need to make sure your situation relates to that. Explore the situation focusing specifically on why you were able to behave in that way, what informed any of your decisions and what effect that may have on those around you including peers, colleagues and patients (Learning Outcome 2). 
c.Briefly discuss the situation in practice where you demonstrate your weakness. Again explore why you behaved in that way, what informed your decision and what effect it may have on those around you including peers, colleagues and patients. It is important that you use evidence to support your views (Learning Outcome 2).
d.Outline a development plan to address the weakness you have explored. This could be in table format. You may want to consider using SMART goals.

NB: You need to provide a sound evidence base for your decisions through the integration of appropriate literature to support your views/arguments. 

3.Conclusion (150 words)
a.Summary. Summarise the key learning points that have emerged from the essay.
b.Recommendations. You may want to summarise what you need to do in your development plan to successfully improve your leadership skills. 

4.References.

Appropriate referencing is an important element of academic writing. Ensure that you have used the most up-to-date UWL referencing guide available from the library. Please be aware that the referencing guide is regularly updated. It is important that you use relevant and reliable sources of information avoid grey literature unless for a specific purpose. Your reference list needs to demonstrate wide reading of all the relevant topics for the essay e.g. for this essay there should be, as a minimum, references on leadership, DoH/NHS, NMC and any relevant reports e.g. Francis, Berwick etc. 

5.Appendices.

Appendices serve both the writer and the reader of your essay. In an appendix, you can include material that supports your work but that would be distracting or too long in the text of the essay. Material in an appendix must be relevant to the essay, and links and references between the appendix and the essay need to be made in the main text. Make sure that you correctly cite references for any diagrams or other resources used unless of course you have designed them yourself. This is where you will include your SWOT analysis.