Succession Planning: Nurse Leaders Learning From Leaders to Promote Workforce Excellence

The Nurse Leadership Intensive was designed specifically for nurse leaders wishing to advance to nurse executive positions and includes three tiers of nursing leaders: nurse fellows, nurse executives, nurse managers and educators.  The academic-practice partnership was designed to prepare five cohorts of 20 to 30 baccalaureate prepared staff nurses as DNP graduates eligible for certification as advanced practice registered nurses (APRN).  The three nurse intensive groups received formal developmental planning and mentoring with emphasis on high level operational issues, developing vision, financial and business acumen, and teamwork.  Their practicum involved identification and leadership of system-wide change projects with coaching from nurse executives and teams composed of participants with expertise across the multi-hospital system.  These change projects demonstrate the impact nursing leaders have on safe, quality, affordable patient care and healthier communities.  The two year program included intensive assessment and development planning, didactic and experiential curriculum, networking and mentoring between upper and mid-level leaders and engagement in a system-wide project practicum.  Simultaneously, workforce succession planning was underway with focus on the development of infrastructure to promote and foster an academic-practice partnership initiative.  The culmination of this program was to roll out and effectively implement six strategic delivery of care model change projects supported by the organization’s, “Vision 2020 Nursing Strategic Plan”, and consistent with the Institute of Medicine’s, The Future of Nursing, recommendations.  Baseline data and metrics have been established, project teams have identified key stake holders, project time lines and end state deliverables are in place for sharing lessons learned and tips for developing an effective nursing leadership intensive.  In addition, from a Return on Investment prospective, 40 nurse leaders completed the initiative with the following results: 10 were promoted internally; 10 achieved DNP degree; five were promoted in a different organization; eight left the organization; and seven remain in their current position.  The sponsoring Institute for Nursing was the only designated health organization accredited by the National League for Nursing (NLN) in 2013 as a Center of Excellence, and believes that leaders do indeed learn from leaders.  From an academic-practice partnership perspective, the partnership is on task and trending to produce, over a seven-year period, the necessary workforce to meet patient population management needs for the regions served.

IOM (Institute of Medicine). 2011.  The Future of Nursing: Leading change, Advancing Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

 Galuska, Lee  A., MSN, RN. Cultivating Nursing Leadership for our Envisioned  Future. Advances in Nursing Science, Vol. 35. No. 4. pp 333-345.  2012 Wolters Kluwer Health /Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.