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.

Introducing the Leadership in Enabling Occupation (LEO) model.

BACKGROUND: Occupational therapy is a broad profession yet access to services remains restricted and uneven across Canada. Access to the potential breadth of occupational therapy is severely restrained by complex supply, retention, and funding challenges. To improve access to occupational therapy, widespread leadership is needed by all practitioners. PURPOSE: This brief report introduces the Leadership in Enabling Occupation (LEO) Model, which displays the inter-relationship of four elements of everyday leadership as described in "Positioning Occupational Therapy for Leadership," Section IV, of Enabling Occupation II: Advancing a Vision of Health, Well-being and Justice through Occupation (Townsend & Polatajko, 2007). KEY ISSUES: All occupational therapists have the power to develop leadership capacity within and beyond designated leadership positions. IMPLICATIONS: LEO is a leadership tool to extend all occupational therapists' strategic use of scholarship, new accountability approaches, existing and new funding, and workforce planning to improve access to occupational therapy.

Occupational therapists lead a national injury prevention strategy to help older drivers.

BACKGROUND: As older adults are the fastest growing segment of the driving population, the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (CAOT) has taken older driver safety as a key priority. PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to present the National Blueprint for Injury Prevention in Older Drivers (Blueprint) and its related activities. KEY ISSUES: Since 2006, CAOT has been working on initiatives relating to the National Blueprint for Injury Prevention in Older Drivers. The most recent activities include the launch of informational brochures and a website. IMPLICATIONS: The Blueprint and its related activities were developed with the intent to prolong safe driving among older adults in Canada, and to propose future actions to be addressed by all stakeholders interested in older driver safety.