Creating a Model for Mindfulness in Nursing Professional Development Using Concept Analysis.

Mindfulness has many benefits, but its mechanisms of action are not universally understood. This analysis explores mindfulness and informs a model for its practical applications in health care and professional development. A mindful nursing professional development practitioner can use metacognitive thought processes to enhance interpersonal connections and create better learning environments to facilitate practice change. The literature supports the testing of this model in nursing professional development.

Developing nurse leaders: Toward a theory of authentic leadership empowerment.

AIM: The aim of this article is to present a theoretical synthesis of the theory of authentic leadership and the theory of structural empowerment. The new middle-range theory, Theory of Authentic Leadership Empowerment (TALE), is meant to be used as a guide for the professional development of nurses into leadership roles. BACKGROUND: The Institute of Medicine's Future of Nursing Report calls for nurses across all levels and settings, to develop leadership skills to address the ever-growing complexities in health care. However, the best approach to developing nurse leaders is not known. DESIGN: Walker and Avant's method for theory synthesis was used. The two theories were critically appraised from a philosophical and theoretical perspective. Then the theories were synthesized by nesting structural empowerment concepts into authentic leadership to arrive at the proposed TALE. RESULTS: TALE highlights how a nurse's individual history, personal values, ethics, and the organization's structure interact and influence the development of leaders who are authentic. CONCLUSIONS: TALE offers nurse leaders, nursing professional development practitioners, and other stakeholders concerned with developing authentic leaders a holistic theoretical framework to understand leadership development at the individual level while also accounting for the importance of contextual influences.