NP Bookshelf

Abstract

Cynthia Armstrong Persily, 2013, 258 pages, $60 The Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson (IOM/RWJ) Initiative on the Future of Nursing led to the 2010 release of the report “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health” (http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/The-Future-of-Nursing-Leading-Change-Advancing-Health.aspx). One of the 4 messages of that report was “Nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other health care professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States.” This mandate has been interpreted by many as a need to bolster the leadership capacity of nurses. This book is filled with foundational content, creative ideas, new strategies, and encouragement about how nurses can achieve this goal. Thus, the book can be useful in both nursing curricula and clinical organizations in which nurses can assume a leadership position. Many nursing programs had a course on leadership. However, some of that content has been integrated into other courses, and some of the basic information about leadership seems to have fallen through the cracks at many universities. The IOM/RWJ report has drawn new attention to the importance of this content. This book integrates standard information about health care teams and partnerships and then provides some very practical information about putting them in action and the challenges of maintaining and maximizing these relationships. In order to be able to evaluate real life relationships, the author has relied on experiences of the West Virginia Nursing Leadership Institute (WVNLI) as they established programs designed to support nurses through a year-long training program and their experiences as they returned to their home institutions. What the WVNLI learned is that organizations whose nurses attended the training program in groups and then returned to their original organizations with new leadership knowledge, competencies, and skills became leaders and helped create change among other nurses. If only individual nurses from an organization attended the training, however, those nurses were less successful as leaders when they returned home because they did not have a peer group with similar knowledge, skills, and attitudes with which they could join forces to create change. This important idea underlies the book's focus of teams and partnerships. This book has 4 major sections:•Nursing and health care team models and skills: This section provides basic definitions and examples about teams and how they differ from partnerships. Elements of effective nursing and health care teams and partnerships are identified, and ways to get started and be successful in team building are suggested.•Nursing and health care teams in action: This section presents basic leadership theory and specific tools for running team meetings, planning projects, and managing change. Evaluation of team success is also described and examples provided.•Nursing and health care team issues and challenges: How to provide periodic maintenance for teams and partnerships, and then examples of how to institute leadership training and development programs are addressed.•Leverage of nursing and health care team results: Leveraging as a strategy and how to describe and use success effectively, along with how to build partnerships in order to sustain team results, are discussed. These chapters are written with clear learning objectives, definitions of common terms or explanation of basic principles, and realistic examples. Each chapter ends with a summary, next steps, and questions for thought. The book is rich with examples and learning activities that should inspire nurses to become stronger leaders. The information in this book will be helpful whether the nurse is new to the concept of nursing leadership or has served in leadership roles and desires to upgrade his or her transformative knowledge and skills. With continuing nursing and medical shortages, nurse practitioners are expected to assume a greater leadership role in many institutions. These ideas will be empowering to the NP who must be successful as a leader.