Description/Overview: The symposium purpose is to describe the use of nursing research workshops to develop leadership capacity in Russian nurses. Symposium presenters will discuss the structure and process used to design and implement two nursing research workshops for Russian nurses to achieve the outcome of developing Russian research projects. A group of American nurses, serving as mentors, worked with Russian nurses to design research projects they wanted to implement in the Russian health care system. The process and resources needed to conduct the projects were developed through mentoring sessions that led to the formation of a global nursing community to assist Russian nurses with the implementation of projects in their work settings. Importantly, these research workshops were designed to assist the Russian nurses use the research process to learn more about their practice, gain a sense of command of their practice and a sense of influence and confidence they are able to make important contributions to their care and work environments. This learning about how to make contributions that will advance the quality of care for their patients has helped them achieve a sense of influence that they as nurses can have to better the lives of their patients. Learning about nursing research and designing research projects to implement in their work environments served to develop their leadership capacity. In addition, the research workshops contributed to establishing a global nursing community and provided mentoring for the continued research and leadership development of Russian nurses. Evaluation of this endeavor suggests Russian nurses have learned not only more about how to integrate evidence into their practice, but also how to use information related to designing and conducting projects within their work settings that may further be used in ongoing practice improvement.

Learner Objective #1: Describe how to combine research workshops with mentoring as a leadership development strategy

Learner Objective #2: Describe the resources needed to create a mentoring community using research for leadership capacity development