Paper
Wednesday, 19 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Advanced Practice Nursing Initiatives
Clinical Nurse Specialists Perception of the Relationship Between Their Leadership Skills and Positive Patient Outcomes
Pam I. H. George, MSA, MSN, Clinical Effectiveness, St Joseph Medical Center, Tacoma, WA, USA
Learning Objective #1: Discuss clinical nurse specialists perception of the influence of their leadership skills on positive patient outcomes.
Learning Objective #2: Describe clinical nurse specialists perception of the adequacy of their educational preparedness in leadership skills.
Two national nursing organizations, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (NACNS) endorse leadership skills and knowledge as essential to the effective practice of clinical nurse specialists (CNSs). AACN identifies the need for leadership skills in CNSs and states that master degree nursing programs must prepare CNSs to provide leadership in the delivery of health care. The recommended leadership content includes communication skills with other health care professionals, collaborative skills, change agent skills, and negotiation skills The second national organization is the NACNS, which developed 1998 Statement on Clinical Nurse Specialist Practice and Education. Using this statement as the research framework over 300 clinical nurse specialists were surveyed to examine their perception of the influence of their leadership skills on positive patient outcomes, their leadership competency and their perception of their educational preparedness in leadership skills. CNSs educated in the last five years identified areas of additional education in leadership skills. Results of this study identified the mean and standard deviation of the four domains of leadership skills: communication, disciplined inquiry, identification of patterns or systems thinking and ethical reasoning. Since this is the initial use of this questionnaire, the four domains of leadership skills were evaluated by Cronbach's alpha, the estimate of internal consistency. A second measurement is Pearson r. These two measures will demonstrate correlation to the total populations Future research includes the measurement of CNSs leadership skills.

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