Dan Weberg

Transformational leadership and staff retention: an evidence review with implications for healthcare systems.

A significant amount of burnout and attrition of nurses occurs in healthcare systems. Nursing leadership has a significant impact on these factors. The purpose of this article is to present an evidence review to determine the impact of transformational leadership on staff satisfaction and burnout. It was found that transformational leadership is significantly related to increased satisfaction, increased staff well-being, decreased burnout, and decreased overall stress in staff nurses.

Complexity Leadership: A Healthcare Imperative

PROBLEM The healthcare system is plagued with increasing cost and poor quality outcomes. A major contributing factor for these issues is that outdated leadership practices, such as leader-centricity, linear thinking, and poor readiness for innovation, are being used in healthcare organizations. SOLUTION Complexity leadership theory provides a new framework with which healthcare leaders may practice leadership. Complexity leadership theory conceptualizes leadership as a continual process that stems from collaboration, complex systems thinking, and innovation mindsets. CONCLUSION Compared to transactional and transformational leadership concepts, complexity leadership practices hold promise to improve cost and quality in health care.

Measuring competence: collaboration for safety.

Few options are available to nursing regulatory boards for the evaluation of nursing competency in registered nurses who are reported for practice breakdown. To address this deficiency, the authors conducted funded research through collaboration between their respective institutions: a state nursing regulatory board, a community college nursing program, and a state university nursing program. Through this collaboration, a competency evaluation process that used high-fidelity simulation was developed and was called the nursing performance profile (NPP). The NPP process consisted of evaluation of videotaped performances of registered nurses providing simulated patient care in three successive situations. Nurses who were experienced in both practice and supervision rated the performances according to scoring guidelines developed by the authors. Findings showed that the NPP process has the potential to (1) provide regulators, educators, and employers with a quantitative picture of nurse performance across nine areas essential to safe practice, and (2) establish a basis for recommending a specific remediation plan or continuing professional development.

Innovation in healthcare: a concept analysis.

Innovation is a frequently used buzzword in healthcare. This article will clarify innovation as a process requiring leadership, among other factors, in order to occur. The concept of innovation will be defined, as well as the precedents and consequences. This exploration will serve as the definition of healthcare innovation and provide a clearer definition for future literature and research in healthcare, especially related to leadership and change. It is the purpose for this article to allow the reader to think about innovation in a critical manner and begin to add substantive meaning related to it.

Caring for innovation and caring for the innovator.

Innovative individuals can be an annoying source of disruption in the workplace—always asking “why are we doing this?” and challenging long-held assumptions. Some individuals have the audacity to make changes believed to improve outcomes with or without support. Their actions and rationale for the actions are based on the belief that they are improving outcomes and adding value because current processes are no longer appropriate. This lack of regard for the status quo may be essential for organizational survival. These creative, innovative, and risky activities can and should be reframed and transformed from the lens of the innovator. Caring theory provides the interface for successful integration of innovative behaviors into the current healthcare culture. As we are students in the first Master of Healthcare Innovation program in the country, our experiences and challenges are shared from the framework of Caring for the Innovator. This article builds a case for enhancing the healthcare culture to recognize and value innovation and subsequently to support and care for the healthcare innovator. A brief discussion of the need for a new approach to innovation, an overview of the concepts of innovation and caring, and caring strategies to support innovation are presented.

Leading the Future We Envision: Nurturing a Culture of Innovation Across the Continuum of Care.

In the Fall of 2012, this large integrated health care system located in Northern California, comprising 21 hospitals and employing more than 25 000 nurses across all inpatient, outpatient, and continuum of care areas, embarked upon a comprehensive initiative to further engage the “hearts and minds” of its nursing workforce while establishing a foundation for innovation in an era of health care reform. This article will outline the strategy employed to ensure that professional nurses across the continuum of care were made aware of the impact of the Affordable Care Act. Major shifts to value-based care and improved performance expectations focus our attention on quality, service, and affordability, also known as the “Triple Aim.” Transitioning from a volume-focused model to a value-based care model requires measurable and sustainable improvements over current performance, reinforcing the importance of increased levels of engagement, shared accountability, and purposeful collaboration. Over a span of 18 months, the organization conducted 55 interactive educational forums for point-of-care care teams and leadership. These dynamic learning events helped recalibrate the working foundation for how leaders would nurture the process for innovation among care teams and transform care across the continuum of care.

Seven behaviors to advance teamwork: findings from a study of innovation leadership in a simulation center.

Traditional notions of individual-based leadership behaviors are no longer adequate to achieve innovation in health care organizations. A major contributing factor for limited innovation is that outdated leadership practices, such as leader centricity, linear thinking, and poor readiness for innovation, are being used in health care organizations. Through a qualitative case study analysis of innovation implementation, 7 characteristics of innovation leadership, founded in team behaviors, were uncovered. The characteristics that were uncovered included boundary spanning, risk taking, visioning, leveraging opportunity, adaptation, coordination of information flow, and facilitation. These characteristics describe how leaders throughout the system were able to influence and implement innovation successfully.