Paper
Monday, November 5, 2007
455
Nursing Leadership Development: Stories of Personal and Professional Transformation
Mary O'Connor, PhD, RN, CHE, Nursing Department, College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
| Learning Objective #1: through the stories of nurse leaders, describe the impact that one nursing leadership education experience has had on leadership practice. |
| Learning Objective #2: articulate innovative strategies for nurse leader education and personal/professional development. |
Studies focusing on the nursing shortage list strengthening nursing leadership as a priority that needs to be addressed. While skills and competencies of nurse leaders have been identified, there are many avenues available for leadership education. The purpose of this study was to describe, through an interview process, how the experience of participating in the Center for Nursing Leadership (CNL) affected the personal and/or professional life journey as reported by individual CNL members who had attended the CNL experience at least twice. Using narrative analysis as a method of qualitative inquiry, eighteen participants were asked to describe their CNL experiences. Within the framework of social constructivism, the participants’ stories revealed what the CNL experience has meant to them personally, while addressing four research questions. These were: what influences a nurse leader’s decision to seek out the CNL experience; what were nurse leaders’ perspectives about the influence of the CNL experiences on their life/career journey; how did nurse leaders describe their CNL community experiences; and how did nurse leaders describe their CNL learning experiences? Six themes emerged from the stories, which disclose the collective experience. These are: Sensing Readiness, Inviting Environment, Living Community, Renewing Self, Changing Life and Leadership and Reaching Out. Implications for nurse administrators and nurse educators are offered. These included the need to increase awareness about learning readiness for themselves and their management team members; the importance of creating a healthy and safe working/learning environment and culture of openness; consideration of an experiential-based leadership development approach which inspires renewal and personal and professional growth; establishing new ways of teaching and mentoring the next generation of nurse leaders; integrating relationship-based and experiential methods into the everyday practices of nurse administrators and educators within their organizations.