Going beyond the hero in leadership development: the place of healthcare context, complexity and relationships: Comment on "Leadership and leadership development in healthcare settings - a simplistic solution to complex problems?".

There remains a conviction that the torrent of publications and the financial outlay on leadership development will create managers with the skills and characters of perfect leaders, capable of guiding healthcare organisations through the challenges and crises of the 21st century. The focus of much attention continues to be the search for the (illusory) core set of heroic qualities, abilities or competencies that will enable the development of leaders to achieve levels of supreme leadership and organisational performance. This brief commentary adds support to McDonald's (1) call for recognition of the complexity of the undertaking.

Retention of nurses in the primary and community care workforce after the age of 50 years: database analysis and literature review.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study conducted to explore strategies for retaining nurses and their implications for the primary and community care nursing workforce.

Background: An ageing nursing workforce has forced the need for recruitment and retention of nurses to be an important feature of workforce planning in many countries. However, whilst there is a growing awareness of the factors that influence the retention of nurses within secondary care services, little is known about those that influence retention of nurses in primary and community care.

Retaining older nurses in primary care and the community.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study conducted to examine issues associated with the impact of age on the retention of female primary and community care nurses in the National Health Service in England.

Background: Little is known about why older nurses in the primary and community care workforce leave and what might encourage them to stay.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey using a semi-structured postal questionnaire was carried out during 2005.

Nurses working in primary and community care settings in England: problems and challenges in identifying numbers.

Background: One third of the primary care nursing workforce is aged 50 years and over. Workforce planning is essential if primary care is to ensure that there are appropriate numbers of nurses available to replace the loss of experienced nurses as they approach retirement.

Introduction: As part of an ongoing study to explore the factors influencing retention of female nurses over the age of 50 years in the primary care nursing workforce, a questionnaire survey targeting all community nurses employed in five Primary Care Trusts was undertaken.

Researchers' responses to research management and governance for primary care research in England: persistent and escalating problems over time.

Purpose: Research Governance has been introduced to regulate research involving National Health Service (NHS) patients and staff but the process is lengthy and bureaucratic and has improved little since its introduction. The paper seeks to investigate changes over time.

Design/methodology/approach: A comparison between two studies, one in 2003-2004 and the second in 2004-2005, provided the opportunity of observing the process of Research Governance as it was developing.

Examining leadership through critical feminist readings.

Purpose: This paper seeks to explore a critique of the limitations of mainstream leadership research and publications and offers a critical management analysis through drawing on a feminist reading of leadership in organizations.

Design/methodology/approach: There has recently been witnessed a growing interest in the promotion of effective leadership within both organizational studies literature and organisational policy as the route to ensuring employee commitment and enhanced organisational performance and the achievement of ever demanding goals and targets. This turn to leadership is represented in both an upsurge of research studies and a proliferation in the promotion of leadership as the organisational panacea.

Evaluating self-managed integrated community teams.

After briefly describing self-managed integrated community teams, the authors explore potential and actual methods of evaluating their structures, processes and outcomes. Primary health care staff in three comparable sites were studied using non-participant observation, interviews, focus groups and questionnaires. After describing the fieldwork, the authors examine integrated team structures, which are characterised by a large number of barriers that integrated teams face.