Editorial

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The nursing profession is confronted with navigating the perfect storm as it strives to build cultures of safety for patients and families while simultaneously handling an epic crisis in workforce issues involving both nurses and nursing faculty. This culminates in a situation of high risk for people, for resources and for whole organizations and systems. (Hinshaw, 2008, p. S4)In using the metaphor of the perfect storm, Hinshaw highlights the depth of the challenges facing contemporary leaders in nursing, not least of which is the quality of the nursing workplace. Quality of work environment is a key factor in achieving optimal workplace outcomes and retaining nurses (Bowles & Candela, 2005). A healthy working environment is said to be one in which staff can accomplish organisational goals and experience work satisfaction and fulfi lment (Shirey, 2006). However, it is now well recognised that for many nurses, negotiating the workplace is experienced as complicated, diffi cult and even traumatic, and it has been suggested that the healthcare workforce is in a period 'that can arguably be considered the most chaotic and unstable in memory' (Bowles & Candela, 2005, p. 131). Current indications are that without serious system reforms, this situation has the potential for further deterioration.From a sizeable body of international literature, we know that workplace diffi culties for nurses are associated with various factors, which at times can include inter-professional confl ict (Bowles & Candela, 2005; Jackson, Clare, & Mannix, 2002; Johnson & Rea, 2009). Literature suggests that workplace diffi culties themselves play an important part in the retention of staff as well as infl uencing staff morale, job satisfaction and worker wellbeing (Hutchinson, Vickers, Jackson, Wilkes, 2006; Jackson et al., 2002; Johnson & Rea, 2009). In addition to negatively affecting nurses, unhealthy workplaces carry fi nancial implications for organisations (AACN, 2005), and have also been implicated in suboptimal patient outcomes (Cummings et al., 2008; Hutchinson et al., 2006, 2008). This is hardly surprising, because how can we claim to provide healing and therapeutic environments for patients and families, when considerable numbers of health staff are simultaneously experiencing these same environments as harmful and noxious?In the face of convincing literature that highlights workplace adversity and diffi culties in nursing, one contemplates the role of leaders and leadership. Though constructed in various ways, it is generally accepted that leadership involves infl uence, occurs as a result of interconnectedness between people, and has strong interpersonal and relational aspects (Cummings et al., 2008; Jackson, 2008; Zilembo & Monterosso, 2008). Effective leadership and particularly effective clinical leadership is proffered as the panacea to poor management, and the organisational diffi culties that are so endemic in many contemporary healthcare environments (Garling, 2008; Jackson & Watson, 2009). Resources exist to infl uence and assist leaders in healthcare. The American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN), for example, has provided direction in the area of promoting healthy work environments for nurses, through the identifi cation of six standards for establishing and sustaining healthy work environments. These are: skilled communication, true collaboration, effective decision-making, appropriate staffi ng, meaningful recognition and authentic leadership (AACN, 2005).In identifying authentic leadership as a key standard essential to the creation of a healthy workplace, the AACN positions leadership as being among the central elements necessary to foster a healthy work environment. Authentic leadership recognises the crucial role that follower trust plays in leadership, and acknowledges the role of positive emotions such as optimism and hope in achieving desired leadership outcomes (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans, & May, 2004). …