A Tool to Identify Key Behaviors and Attributes of High-Performing Nurses.

Objective: The purpose of this project was to identify key behaviors and attributes that distinguish high-performing nurses to develop a tool for employment screening, staff development, and performance management.

Background: Selecting nurses who will complement an organization's mission and philosophy is a key step toward achieving quality and safety goals, ensuring patient and family satisfaction, and improving retention rates and overall costs.

Methods: Focus group methodology was used to determine perceptions of high-performing nurses' behaviors and attributes.

Essential qualities of an effective clinical leader.

Strong and effective clinical leadership is needed by practicing nurses as our healthcare systems continue to decentralize and shift decision making closer to the bedside. Innovation and new ways of leading and following are required. New forms of clinical leadership can energize and transform today's work environments.

The effects of concrete objective information and relaxation on maintaining usual activity during radiation therapy.

Purpose/objectives: To examine the effects of concrete objective information (COI) and relaxation instruction (RI) on patients undergoing radiation therapy, as well as the contribution of symptom uncertainty and body awareness to the intervention effects.

Design: Three-group randomized trial. Assignment was stratified by cancer site.