N479 Leadership Management Shadowing Activity Form

Your Name: Bryanna Barcelo Date of Activity: September 16, 2015 Faculty name: Professor
Moutafis
Who did you shadow (add their credentials too)
I shadowed charge nurse Sarah Knapp, BSN RN.
Role of this leader and where do they practice? (Be specific)
Sarah works on the abdominal surgical oncology transplant unit at BUMC. She has the role of
charge nurse, which consists of taking care of assigned patients in addition to some management
responsibilities. Sarahs responsibilities include appointing nursing assignments, making staffing
schedules, overseeing the unit, and overseeing admissions and discharges. Her role also consists
of making sure the unit is supplied with the proper equipment such as a working code cart and
necessary medications. Sarahs role also consists of counting the narcotic medications at the start
and end of the shift and attending a hospital bed meeting. Additionally, the day that I worked
with Sarah on top of being charge nurse she also had a patient load. During our shift Sarah
additionally provided other nurses with guidance and counsel when needed. Throughout the shift
Sarah would round on other nurses to make sure they were doing okay. Sarah would also jump in
and answer other nurses call lights and take phone calls. Overall, Sarah made sure that the unit
was running smoothly while making her patients a priority.
Discuss the benefit and value of this experience to you (Be specific).
This experience was of value to me because I know that I want to be charge nurse eventually in
my career. This shadowing opportunity not only showed me the role of the nurse but it also

exposed me to the skills needed to succeed as a charge nurse. Some of the skills I learned are
necessary include strong leadership skills, good communication, and flexibility. Charge nurses
should also have enough experience to be able to answer or direct nurses or patients questions.
Finally, charge nurses must be able to have good organization skills since their role consists of
many different tasks.
Would you recommend this specific shadowing experience in the future; why or why not?
(Describe why or why not)
I would recommend this experience in the future because being able to follow charge nurse is an
opportunity that does not come up at any other point in our education. I believe it is important to
understand what the charge nurse role consists of since we work with them so closely. In
addition, most nurses will eventually become charge nurse; therefore it is beneficial to shadow
the charge nurse in order to better understand the role. After this experience the role of the charge
nurse finally makes sense to me, for this reason I would recommend it in the future.
Business card obtained/attached?_No__Signature on validation of clinical hours form
obtained?__yes__