Nurses Taking the Lead: A Look Back to Move Forward.

In recognition of the Year of the Nurse and Midwife, the 2020 annual conference of the Association for Leadership Science in Nursing (ALSN) celebrated A Look Back to Move Forward in recognition of the 50th anniversary of ALSN. The ALSN began as the Council of Graduate Education for Administrative Nursing (CGEAN) in 1970. Today, ALSN maintains the goals of shaping graduate education and research to inform nursing leadership practice.

Disruptive Innovation: Impact for Practice, Policy, and Academia.

The 2019 Association for Leadership Science in Nursing International Conference, Disruptive Innovation, was held in Los Angeles, California, with attendees from 30 US states, Canada, Brazil, and China. Presenters discussed the need for nurse leaders to advocate for health equity, lead evidence-based innovation, how robots and other technology are generating disruptive innovations in healthcare, and building strong academic-practice partnerships to address nursing workforce challenges. This article will report on these important insights.

Preparing Chief Nurse Successors: An Evaluation of the Chief Nursing Officer Academy.

The traditional role of the chief nursing officer (CNO) is expanding to include new clinical areas and patient populations. Chief nursing officers find themselves challenged to balance both system and site priorities, compounded with the expectation to lead their organization during a merger, acquisition, or hospital closure and the changes in healthcare reimbursement. Chief nursing officers must anticipate emerging issues and be prepared to manage those issues. They are at high risk politically when a new chief executive officer is named and when hospitals are having financial concerns. How do we lead in times of turbulence? How can we ensure that high-potential candidates are prepared for the CNO role and what are the most critical competencies they will need? To address these concerns, we created a Chief Nursing Officer Academy (CNOA) that is designed for new and aspiring CNOs. This article provides an overview of the CNOA and a program evaluation of the outcomes for the participants.

Grassroots to Global: The Future of Nursing Leadership.

The 2018 International Nursing Administration Research Conference, Grassroots to Global, was held in Atlanta, Georgia, with attendees from 38 US states, Canada, and China. Presenters discussed the need for nurse leaders to be prepared to partner with those inside and outside of healthcare to create innovative, interprofessional care delivery models; advocate for advancements in technology to address healthcare access shortages; and lead new areas of research that can drive policy change to support nurse leaders in long-term care and the essential role of the nurse manager in creating optimal practice environments for quality outcomes. This article will report on these important insights.

Nursing's Leadership Role in Advancing Professional Practice/Work Environments as Part of the Quadruple Aim.

Development of healthy professional practice/work environments (PPWEs) for nursing practice is critical to optimizing patient safety and workforce satisfaction while limiting turnover. Healthy PPWEs are linked with improved outcomes for patients, the workforce, and organizations. Nurses constitute the greatest professional segment of the US health care workforce and influence PPWEs, patient experience, health care quality, and cost per capita, all aspects of the quadruple aim. This article shares a model of leadership identified by executive nurse leaders to address and foster healthy PPWEs. A focus group of 16 expert nurse leaders convened an invitational meeting in Richmond, Virginia, to discuss nurse leaders' roles in optimizing the quadruple aim. The discussions led to shared perceptions about the prevalence of barriers to optimizing PPWEs; nursing leaders' responsibility to address the barriers to supporting improvement of the work-life of nursing professionals; and the need for early integration of leadership education, theory, and practice in every nurse's career.

Using a Triad Leadership Model at the System Level to Achieve Outcomes.

Nurses must partner with physicians and other health professionals in redesigning healthcare. What do nurse executives need to learn to participate and lead as part of a highly functioning executive triad? In this column, a former system chief nursing officer will share personal experiences and highlights of outcomes that were improved.

NAQ's 40th Birthday Nursing: Predictions From the Past; Predictions for the Future, Parts I & II.

The following two articles relate to Nursing's past and future, described through a series of predictions made by one of Nursing's great leaders Margaret L. McClure (Maggie McClure). It is reprinted from NAQ Fall 2000, Volume 25, Issue 1. The second article, by another great leader, Joyce Batcheller, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, is a follow up on those predictions, reflecting on Nursing today and tommorow.

On-Boarding a New Chief Nursing Officer to Lead a Magnet Redesignation Visit: The Value of Relationships.

The chief nursing officer (CNO) is a critical senior executive in a hospital and serves as the architect of patient care. Recruiting, hiring, and on-boarding a new CNO present a challenge for any facility. Stakes are higher when the facility is replacing a CNO in the midst of its Magnet redesignation. How does a facility ensure success under these circumstances? This case study demonstrates how one organization was successful in meeting this challenge.

The resilient nurse leader: reinvention after experiencing job loss.

The nurse executive has been especially vulnerable to unexpected job loss as a result of financial and other pressures in the health care environment. The nurse leader is often the one who holds the standards of quality and safety above those of cost. While there may be many reasons or factors that affect a sudden removal of a nurse leader, the problem is that the unexpected job loss is often a devastating and traumatic event to the individual affected. Twelve nurse executives who experienced unexpected job loss were interviewed in depth for this study. Stories collected illustrated deep personal and professional loss of identity and self-esteem as well as colleagues and friends. Their resilience and ability to get past this adversity aided the nurse leaders in their healing, recovery, and reinvention of their professional selves. Finally, following reflection, the participants offer strategies for averting unexpected job loss as well as preparing for transition.

Excellence and evidence in staffing: a data-driven model for excellence in staffing (2nd edition).

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, 2010) and the Institute of Medicine's (IOM, 2011) Future of Nursing report have prompted changes in the U.S. health care system. This has also stimulated a new direction of thinking for the profession of nursing. New payment and priority structures, where value is placed ahead of volume in care, will start to define our health system in new and unknown ways for years. One thing we all know for sure: we cannot afford the same inefficient models and systems of care of yesterday any longer. The Data-Driven Model for Excellence in Staffing was created as the organizing framework to lead the development of best practices for nurse staffing across the continuum through research and innovation. Regardless of the setting, nurses must integrate multiple concepts with the value of professional nursing to create new care and staffing models. Traditional models demonstrate that nurses are a commodity. If the profession is to make any significant changes in nurse staffing, it is through the articulation of the value of our professional practice within the overall health care environment. This position paper is organized around the concepts from the Data-Driven Model for Excellence in Staffing. The main concepts are: Core Concept 1: Users and Patients of Health Care, Core Concept 2: Providers of Health Care, Core Concept 3: Environment of Care, Core Concept 4: Delivery of Care, Core Concept 5: Quality, Safety, and Outcomes of Care. This position paper provides a comprehensive view of those concepts and components, why those concepts and components are important in this new era of nurse staffing, and a 3-year challenge that will push the nursing profession forward in all settings across the care continuum. There are decades of research supporting various changes to nurse staffing. Yet little has been done to move that research into practice and operations. While the primary goal of this position paper is to generate research and innovative thinking about nurse staffing across all health care settings, a second goal is to stimulate additional publications. This includes a goal of at least 20 articles in Nursing Economic$ on best practices in staffing and care models from across the continuum over the next 3 years.

Hope for the future: intensifying spirituality in the workplace.

Healthy workplaces address various issues. Work focused on ergonomics addresses physical issues, satisfaction surveys reveal psychosocial issues; and other approaches address spirituality issues. Spirituality in the workplace contributes to holistic care and to the worth of the individual. Incorporating the concept of spirituality, in its broad sense, into the workplace enriches leadership practice and contributes to a holistic work environment. Spirituality is core to the servant leader approach to leadership and beneficial to other approaches. Followers benefit from a holistic approach to leadership; and some specific practices can exhibit the belief an organization holds related to the worth of the individual. Incorporating spirituality into an organization reflects the same values nursing holds for person-centered care, a view of integration of physical, psychological, and spiritual needs.

Publish or perish: writing clinical manuscripts suitable for publication.

A successful hospital network and university faculty collaboration offered 21 staff nurses and nurse leaders opportunities to develop clinical manuscripts that would be suitable for publishing their innovative ideas. This process prepared them to synthesize relevant literature and develop their ideas into manuscripts. Ten nurses submitted their final manuscripts to refereed journals, and nine individuals or team members had their articles accepted. These accepted publications provided a boost to individual career development and stimulated further valuable professional dissemination goals. One major challenge was to seek further ways to find time to write while working in today's health care arena. Suggestions for future manuscript development are provided.