Leaders Benefit From Organizational Membership: Perspectives From the United States and Canada.

This article explores the value of nurse leader membership in professional organizations in the United States and Canada. Benefits include the sharing of scholarly information, enlarging networks, and professional development.

Gold standard research and evidence applied: The Inspire Nursing Leadership Program.

Billions of dollars are invested annually in leadership development globally; however, few programs are evidence-based, risking adverse outcomes, and wasted time and money. This article describes the novel Inspire Nursing Leadership Program (INLP) and the outcomes-based process of incorporating gold standard evidence into its design, delivery, and evaluation. The INLP design was informed by a needs analysis, research evidence, and by nursing, Indigenous, and equity, diversity, and inclusion experts.

Experiences of Frontline Managers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Recommendations for Organizational Resilience.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global health crisis directly impacting the healthcare system. Healthcare leaders influence and shape the ability of an organization to cope with and recover from a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Their actions serve to guide and support nurses' actions through unpredictable health service demands.

Embracing relational competencies in applying the LEADS framework for health-care leaders in transformational change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the LEADS Framework guided health-care leaders through organizational change and the COVID-19 pandemic in a western Canadian province.

Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative exploratory inquiry assessed the extent to which health leaders applied competencies that aligned with the LEADS Framework. A purposeful sample of 22 health-care leaders participated in the study representing senior, mid-level and front-line health-care leaders in various health-care organizations to ensure diverse representation of leader competencies.

A Call for Urgent Action: Innovations for Nurse Retention in Addressing the Nursing Shortage.

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a defining moment for healthcare delivery and the health workforce despite "being prepared" for it [...

Implementing the Synergy Model: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.

Hospitals across our nation are seeking to implement models of care that meet the primary goals of Quadruple Aim: Improved population health, cost-effective care delivery, and patient and provider satisfaction. In an effort to address the Quadruple Aim and our patients' care needs, Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) embarked on a model of care delivery redesign, beginning with nursing care delivery. From 2013 to 2018, 12 clinical programs at HHS implemented the Synergy Model with its accompanying synergy patient needs assessment tool for nurses to objectively assess patients' acuity and dependency needs.

ALSN 2021 Conference: Nursing Science for Leadership in the New Decade.

The Association for Leadership Science in Nursing's 2021 conference provided an opportunity to further enhance professional understanding of the difficulties facing nurse leaders as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create unimaginable challenges. Presentations provided evidence in support of courageous caring leadership interventions.

Using the Donabedian framework to examine transitional care for cardiac patients and family caregivers.

Purpose: This study aims to examine how health-care managers in acute care and post-acute care facilities support and plan to improve transitional care for cardiac patients and their family caregivers, to better manage care in the home.

Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative descriptive approach, guided by appreciative inquiry was used in this study. A purposive sample of 16 participants were engaged in the study.

Rethinking Resilience: Nurses and Nurse Leaders Emerging From the Post-COVID-19 Environment.

Nurses and nurse leaders are working in unprecedented intense and demanding environments, and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to place strain on their mental well-being. If stressful work conditions remain at extraordinary high levels, nurses and leaders may ultimately leave their positions, creating even more uncertainty in the workforce. Enhancing individual resilience has become a superficial response in retaining nurses during a global nursing shortage.

Psychiatric Nurses' Lived Experiences of Workplace Violence in Acute Care Psychiatric Units in Western Canada.

Workplace violence directed at nurses in healthcare settings is a common occurrence across the globe resulting in negative nurse and organizational implications that may impact the quality of care provided. Psychiatric nurses working on acute care psychiatric units are at an increased risk and are frequently subjected to patients' violent and aggressive behaviors. These implications pose significant threats to the nurses' emotional, physical, and psychological health.

From coping to building nurse manager resilience in rural workplaces in western Canada.

Aim: To investigate the role stressors, and how coping strategies cultivated nurse managers' resilience in rural workplaces.

Background: A stressful workplace can impair the mental and physical health of nurse managers leading to poor performance. Building and sustaining manager resilience in complex and stressful practice environments is necessary to attract and maintain competent and skilled managers.

Nurse perspectives in the emergency department: The synergy tool in workload management and work engagement.

Aim: To explore emergency nurses' perceptions of how a nurse-driven patient needs assessment tool, the synergy tool, influenced their workload management.

Background: Quadruple Aim, particularly the fourth aim of improved staff work experiences, served as the conceptual framework to engage nurses in a participatory action research project. This project took place between 2017 and 2020 in two tertiary care emergency departments in one large Canadian city.

Surveys conducted pre- and post-implementation of a synergy tool: Giving voice to emergency teams.

Aim: To investigate the impact of a patients' needs assessment (synergy tool) on emergency department nurses' perceptions of quality, safe care delivery and morale.

Background: The synergy tool provides real-time data on types of patients, their arrival, management and discharge. This tool was introduced to two urban emergency departments in response to government priorities to reduce emergency department wait times and improve patient flow.

Using the Synergy Tool to Determine Regina Emergency Department Staffing Needs.

This article describes a three-year project between nurse researchers, the Saskatchewan Health Authority, the provincial nurses' union and nurses and leadership from two Regina tertiary care emergency departments. The purpose of the project was to create staffing guidelines based on patients' priority care needs. A patient needs assessment tool - the synergy tool - was used to categorize patients' acuity and dependency needs.

Nurse managers implementing the lean management system: A qualitative study in Western Canada.

Aim: This study explores the perceptions and experiences of nurse managers involved in implementing the Lean management system in a Western Canadian province.

Background: The provincial government of Saskatchewan, Canada, implemented a multimillion-dollar investment in the Lean management system to transform health care delivery by reducing waste and increasing efficiency of processes and outcomes.

Methods: This qualitative exploratory study employed semi-structured interviews with 14 nurse managers in urban and rural health regions in one Canadian province.

Rural Mentorships in Health Care: Factors Influencing Their Development and Sustainability.

Background: The need to recruit and retain health care providers remains a concern in rural communities. This project aimed to better understand what health care providers and senior leaders value in mentorship and determine the best way to implement a mentorship program in rural western Canada.

Method: Health care providers and senior leaders from a rural health region were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling.

Assessing the implementation processes of a large-scale, multi-year quality improvement initiative: survey of health care providers.

Background: Beginning in 2012, Lean was introduced to improve health care quality and promote patient-centredness throughout the province of Saskatchewan, Canada with the aim of producing coordinated, system-wide change. Significant investments have been made in training and implementation, although limited evaluation of the outcomes have been reported. In order to better understand the complex influences that make innovations such as Lean "workable" in practice, Normalization Process Theory guided this study.

The Role of Nurse Leaders in Advancing Carer Communication Needs across Transitions of Care: A Call to Action.

This paper focuses on the central role of senior nurse leaders in advancing organizational resources and support for communication between healthcare providers and carers that influences patient and carer outcomes during the transition from hospital to the community. A Think Tank (Lobchuk 2012) funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) gathered interdisciplinary and intersectoral stakeholders from local, national and international levels to develop a Family Carer Communication Research Collaboration. Workshop stakeholders addressed critical challenges in meeting communication needs of carers as partners with clinicians in promoting safe care for the elderly, chronically or seriously ill or disabled individuals in the community.

Empirical and pragmatic adequacy of grounded theory: Advancing nurse empowerment theory for nurses' practice.

Aims And Objective: To draw on the findings of a grounded theory study aimed at exploring how power is exercised in nurse-manager relationships in the hospital setting, this paper examines the empirical and pragmatic adequacy of grounded theory as a methodology to advance the concept of empowerment in the area of nursing leadership and management.

Background: The evidence on staff nurse empowerment has highlighted the magnitude of individual and organisational outcomes, but has not fully explicated the micro-level processes underlying how power is exercised, shared or created within the nurse-manager relationship. Although grounded theory is a widely adopted nursing research methodology, it remains less used in nursing leadership because of the dominance of quantitative approaches to research.

Impact of Role Stressors on the Health of Nurse Managers: A Western Canadian Context.

Objective: A qualitative exploratory inquiry was used to understand nurse managers' (NMs') perceptions of their role stressors, coping strategies, and self-health related outcomes as a result of frequent exposure to stressful situations in their role.

Background: Strong nursing leadership is required for desirable staff, patient, and organizational outcomes. A stressed NM will negatively influence staff nurse satisfaction and retention, patient outcomes, and organizational performance.

Role stressors and coping strategies among nurse managers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to share preliminary evidence about nurse managers' (NMs) role stressors and coping strategies in acute health-care facilities in Western Canada. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative exploratory inquiry provides deeper insight into NMs' perceptions of their role stressors, coping strategies and factors and practices in the organizational context that facilitate and hinder their work. A purposeful sample of 17 NMs participated in this study.

A Critical Perspective on Relations between Staff Nurses and their Nurse Manager: Advancing Nurse Empowerment Theory.

This study considers empowerment in nurse-manager relations by examining how conflict is handled on both sides and how the critical social perspective has influenced these relations. The authors use inductive analysis of empirical data to explain how (1) nursing work is organized, structured, and circumscribed by centrally determined policies and practices that downplay nurses' professional judgement about patient care; (2) power is held over nurses in their relationship with their manager; and (3) nurses' response to power is to engage in strategies of resistance. The authors illustrate how power influences relations between staff nurses and managers and provide a critical analysis of the strategies of resistance that result in personal, relational, and critical empowerment among staff nurses.

Seeking Connectivity in Nurses' Work Environments: Advancing Nurse Empowerment Theory.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how staff nurses and their managers exercise power in a hospital setting in order to better understand what fosters or constrains staff nurses' empowerment and to extend nurse empowerment theory. Power is integral to empowerment, and attention to the challenges in nurses' work environment and nurse outcomes by administrators, researchers, and policy-makers has created an imperative to advance a theoretical understanding of power in the nurse-manager relationship. A sample of 26 staff nurses on 3 units of a tertiary hospital in western Canada were observed and interviewed about how the manager affected their ability to do their work.

Process of seeking connectivity: social relations of power between staff nurses and nurse managers.

This study explored the process of how power is exercised in nurse-manager relationships in the hospital setting, to better understand what fosters and constrains staff nurse empowerment. Semi-structured interviews and participant observations were conducted with 26 participants in a hospital in Western Canada. Seeking connectivity was the basic social process in which nurses strive to connect with their manager to create a workable partnership in the provision of high-quality patient care while responding to the demands of the organizational context.

Nurse managers' work stressors and coping experiences: unravelling the evidence.

This pilot study explored (a) front-line nurse managers' stressor experiences and (b) coping strategies used in order to respond to the myriad of challenges and demands of their role. The nurse managers who participated indicated that limited resources, ever-increasing challenges and work expectations contributed to the stressors they experience. Coping responses included support, cognitive, personal and social strategies, but findings indicated managers still lacked the ability to cope effectively.