EXERCISE 13.12

When You Have a Large Authority-Power Gap (Marquis & Huston, 2012)

You are a fairly recent registered nurse (RN) graduate. Prior to becoming an RN, you were a licensed vocational nurse (LVN)/licensed practical nurse (LPN) for 8 years and worked at the same hospital in that capacity as you do now as an RN. One of your closest friends, Jina, is an LVN/LPN under your span of control. Although Jina has told you that she is proud of you and glad that you returned to school to obtain your RN license, some of her actions have bothered you. She openly questions some of your instructions and often takes an extra 10 minutes for her breaks. She sometimes laughingly makes remarks about your new status, implying being an RN has "gone to your head."

Today, while doing your end-of-shift charting, you noticed that Jina had not recorded intake and output amounts or vital signs on some of her patients. When you question her, she says, "Oh, you gave me too much to do today and I thought I would leave those for you to do for me."

You feel hurt and betrayed by Jina because you believe that she is directly challenging your new status of team leader. You are not sure what you should do to narrow the authority-power gap because it is becoming obvious that Jina is openly defiant. For you to be successful in your role as team leader, you must take some action to solve this dilemma.

ASSIGNMENT:

How should you proceed? What are the political ramifications if this incident is not handled properly? How should you use your power and authority when dealing with this problem?