Managerial leadership for research use in nursing and allied health care professions: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Leadership by point-of-care and senior managers is increasingly recognized as critical to the acceptance and use of research evidence in practice. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify the leadership behaviours of managers that are associated with research use by clinical staff in nursing and allied health professionals. METHODS: A mixed methods systematic review was performed. Eight electronic bibliographic databases were searched. Studies examining the association between leadership behaviours and nurses and allied health professionals' use of research were eligible for inclusion. Studies were excluded if leadership could not be clearly attributed to someone in a management position. Two reviewers independently screened abstracts, reviewed full-text articles, extracted data and performed quality assessments. Narrative synthesis was conducted. RESULTS: The search yielded 7019 unique titles and abstracts after duplicates were removed. Three hundred five full-text articles were reviewed, and 31 studies reported in 34 articles were included. Methods used were qualitative (n = 19), cross-sectional survey (n = 9), and mixed methods (n = 3). All studies included nurses, and six also included allied health professionals. Twelve leadership behaviours were extracted from the data for point-of-care managers and ten for senior managers. Findings indicated that managers performed a diverse range of leadership behaviours that encompassed change-oriented, relation-oriented and task-oriented behaviours. The most commonly described behavior was support for the change, which involved demonstrating conceptual and operational commitment to research-based practices. CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review adds to the growing body of evidence that indicates that manager-staff dyads are influential in translating research evidence into action. Findings also reveal that leadership for research use involves change and task-oriented behaviours that influence the environmental milieu and the organisational infrastructure that supports clinical care. While findings explain how managers enact leadership for research use, we now require robust methodological studies to determine which behaviours are effective in enabling research use with nurses and allied health professionals for high-quality evidence-based care. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PROSPERO CRD42014007660.

Healthy food procurement policy: an important intervention to aid the reduction in chronic noncommunicable diseases.

In 2010, unhealthy diets were estimated to be the leading risk for death and disability in Canada and globally. Although important, policies aimed at improving individual's skills in selecting and eating healthy foods has had a limited effect. Policies that create healthy eating environments are strongly recommended but have not yet been effectively and/or broadly implemented in Canada. Widespread adoption of healthy food procurement policies are strongly recommended in this policy statement from the Hypertension Advisory Committee with support from 15 major national health organizations. The policy statement calls on governments to take a leadership role, but also outlines key roles for the commercial and noncommercial sectors including health and scientific organizations and the Canadian public. The policy statement is based on a systematic review of healthy food procurement interventions that found them to be almost uniformly effective at improving sales and purchases of healthy foods. Successful food procurement policies are nearly always accompanied by supporting education programs and some by pricing policies. Ensuring access and availability to affordable healthy foods and beverages in public and private sector settings could play a substantive role in the prevention of noncommunicable diseases and health risks such as obesity, hypertension, and ultimately improve cardiovascular health.