Suggestions to nurse authors from one manuscript reviewer.

Many others have written about how to prepare a manuscript for publication. Therefore the purpose of this article is to share the experiences of one reviewer and suggest the need for using a theory or conceptual framework to guide research, practice, and publications. Many times while reading a manuscript I feel I am on a journey of discovery without a road map. My sense is authors may be confused about when to include the conceptual framework or the "theory part" in a manuscript if the work being described was not a research study per se. The author shares recommendations from a recent publication on how to use theory or a conceptual framework in manuscript preparation.

Aligning Provider Team Members With Polyvalent Community Health Workers.

In light of the fragmentation of health care services and the need for health promotion and disease prevention, it is time to consider the important role community health workers (CHWs) could play as part of the health care team. Globally, CHWs tend to focus on a single patient condition, resulting in fragmented, uncoordinated health care services. Polyvalent (or multimodal) CHWs can provide a comprehensive, patient-centric range of care coordination services with other members of the health care team, ultimately improving patient outcomes and decreasing the cost of care. The potential benefits of the polyvalent CHW to the health care team are not widely understood in the United States. To fill this knowledge gap, a toolkit for nurse leaders in mainstream health care settings was created. The toolkit outlines the key elements essential to a successful CHW program and offers strategies for navigating the various challenges involved when integrating this new role into existing models of care.

A New Model of Governance: One University's Journey.

In the nearly 50 years, since the Medicare Program established funding for nursing education in the United States, there has been a steady migration away from hospital-controlled programs toward those which function as wholly owned subsidiaries within larger health care systems. Private sector health care organizations in particular are under increasing pressure to adapt at the risk of losing all of their funding. However, accomplishing this presents multiple challenges for today's nursing education programs in terms of their regulatory compliance, accreditation, autonomy, and, above all, governance model. The authors outline the journey toward, and specific challenges involved in creating, implementing and administering a new governance model, which sustains the overall mission and vision of the education institution while functioning seamlessly within a modern corporate health care system.

An emerging role: the nurse content curator.

A new phenomenon, the inverted or "flipped" classroom, assumes that students are no longer acquiring knowledge exclusively through textbooks or lectures. Instead, they are seeking out the vast amount of free information available to them online (the very essence of open source) to supplement learning gleaned in textbooks and lectures. With so much open-source content available to nursing faculty, it benefits the faculty to use readily available, technologically advanced content. The nurse content curator supports nursing faculty in its use of such content. Even more importantly, the highly paid, time-strapped faculty is not spending an inordinate amount of effort surfing for and evaluating content. The nurse content curator does that work, while the faculty uses its time more effectively to help students vet the truth, make meaning of the content, and learn to problem-solve. Brooks.

Nursing leadership education: an innovative executive solution.

As nursing leaders retire from the nursing workforce, too few nurses are preparing to replace them. The barriers to obtaining the educational credentials necessary to take this important step in a leadership career can appear insurmountable because of cost and time restraints. The authors present an executive format master of science program whose delivery method and content align with the professional and personal needs of emerging nurse leaders.

Psychometric properties of the Chinese-version Quality of Nursing Work Life Scale.

In this study, we developed and tested the psychometric properties of the Chinese-version Quality of Nursing Work Life Scale along seven subscales: supportive milieu with security and professional recognition, work arrangement and workload, work/home life balance, head nurse's/supervisor's management style, teamwork and communication, nursing staffing and patient care, and milieu of respect and autonomy. An instrument-development procedure with three phases was conducted in seven hospitals in 2010-2011. Phase I comprised translation and the cultural-adaptation process, phase II comprised a pilot study, and phase III comprised a field-testing process. Purposive sampling was used in the pilot study (n = 150) and the large field study (n = 1254). Five new items were added, and 85.7% of the original items were retained in the 41 item Chinese version. Principal component analysis revealed that a model accounted for 56.6% of the variance with acceptable internal consistency, concurrent validity, and discriminant validity. This study gave evidence of reliability and validity of the 41 item Chinese-version Quality of Nursing Work Life Scale.

Advancing nursing leadership: a model for program implementation and measurement.

Despite the abundant literature documenting the need for nurse management education and career development, only recently have professional standards been targeted for this group. Competency standards for nurse leaders repeatedly identify systems-level concepts including finance and budget, communication skills, strategic management, human resources management, change management, and computer technology skills. However, educational initiatives to meet these standards are still at the early stages and most nurse leaders continue to acquire knowledge and experience through "on-the-job" training. This article will illustrate the need for partnerships and collaboration between academia and hospitals to advance nursing leadership to the next century. In addition, a tool to measure the impact of a graduate certificate program in nursing administration on nurse leader competencies is presented. Overall, the certificate program has been successful in multiple ways; it has "graduated" almost 80 nurse leaders, improved participant competence in their role at the systems level, as well as providing an impetus for completion of a graduate degree post program.

The nurse leader as logistician: optimizing human capital.

Many traditional approaches to planning and deploying human capital have not been effective. Staffing offices are chaotic, budgets are overrun, staffing is frequently misaligned, a growing number of state legislatures are mandating nurse staffing levels, and dissatisfaction with work schedules abounds. The authors explores methodologies used in the science of logistics management, namely, systems theory and mathematical optimization modeling, which, when applied to human capital planning and deployment, can significantly improve business results.

Evidence-based human resources: the case for exit interview surveys.

This bimonthly department, sponsored by the American Organization of Nurse Executives, presents information to assist nurse leaders in shaping the future of healthcare through creative and innovative leadership. The strategic priorities of the American Organization of Nurse Executives anchor the editorial content. They reflect contemporary healthcare and nursing practice issues that challenge nurse executives as they strive to meet the needs of patients. In this article, the author discusses exit interview surveys that identify reasons why employees leave their organization, what may have encouraged them to stay, and what would entice them back to the organization.

Assessing the quality of nursing work life.

Traditionally, nursing has measured job satisfaction by focusing on employees' likes and dislikes. However, job satisfaction is an unsatisfactory construct to assess either the jobs themselves or employees' feelings about work sinceas much as 30% of the variance explained in job satisfaction surveys is a function of personality, something employers can do little to change. Based on socio-technical systems theory, quality of nursing work life (QNWL) assessments focus on identifying opportunities for nurses to improve their work and work environment while achieving the organization's goals. Moreover, some evidence suggests that improvements in work life are needed to improve productivity. Therefore, assessing QNWL reveals areas for improvement where the needs of both the employees and the organization converge. The purpose of this article was to assess the QNWL of staff nurses using Brooks' Quality of Nursing Work Life Survey.

Defining quality of nursing work life.

As the largest single employee component of hospitals, nurses are critical to the functioning of the organization, and improving employee productivity continues to be a common theme in the health care literature. However, any increased productivity will be transitory if achieved at the expense of the quality of nurses' work life (QNWL), since improvement in the QNWL is prerequisite to improved productivity. The conceptual components of the concept of QNWL that differentiate QNWL from the concept job satisfaction are explored.

Nursing work life in acute care.

The purpose of this project was to explore how acute care nurses in a midwestern state rate the quality of their work life. A simple random sample of 1500 registered nurses was surveyed. Data were collected using Brooks' Quality of Nursing Worklife Survey (Brooks BA. Development of an Instrument to Measure Quality of Nursing Work Life [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago; 2001). Findings suggested that nursing workload was too heavy, and there was not enough time todo the job well. This study revealed that there remain ongoing and fundamental work life concerns for staff nurses that the profession has neither addressed nor resolved in any meaningful, long-term way.