Caring Environment Framework Research Articles

Nurse practitioner affecting systems change in the context of a LEADS leadership framework: Experience from the field.

This paper highlights a new role of Advanced Practice Nurse/Nurse Practitioner as the clinical planning lead in the development of a unique model of care and service delivery for children living with health complexity, in the context of a LEADS leadership framework and related capabilities. The LEADS in a Caring Environment Framework is an effective tool for leadership development and systems change. An experienced Advanced Practice Nurse/Nurse Practitioner hired into a leadership role contributes to system change for a complex population across a large geographic area. World Health Organization, Canadian Nurses Association and other websites, academic databases (PubMed and CINAHL) and relevant books were explored, and the expertise and knowledge of the authors and the redevelopment project team were utilized. The Advanced Practice Nurse/Nurse Practitioner (first author) shares and reflects on her own lived experience as a leader in the planning for programmes and services at the new centre utilizing the five LEADS domains and related capabilities. The utilization of the LEADS in a Caring Environment Capabilities Framework showcases the strengths and skills of an Advanced Practice Nurse/Nurse Practitioner shifting from direct clinical care to successfully leading system-level change. By incorporating the LEADS framework into practice, in any setting or role, Advanced Practice Nurse/Nurse Practitioners can both evaluate and develop their leadership skills while positively effecting system transformation. The LEADS framework fosters ongoing professional development and can be used to measure the added value of Advanced Practice Nurses within an organization. Advanced Practice Nurses improve outcomes within the health care system. Leaders must consider this evidence in health workforce planning, ensuring that Advanced Practice Nursing roles become fully integrated and are supported in the context of national and regional health systems.

Leadership for quality in long-term care.

Leadership in long-term care is a burgeoning field of research, particularly that which is focused on enabling point of care staff to provide high-quality and responsive healthcare. In this article, we focus on the relatively important role that leadership plays in enabling the conditions for high-quality long-term care. Our methodological approach involved a rapid in-depth ethnography undertaken by an interdisciplinary team across eight public and non-profit long-term care homes in Canada, where we conducted over 1,000hours of observations and 275 formal and informal interviews with managers, staff, residents, family members and volunteers. Guiding our analysis post hoc is the LEADS in a Caring Environment framework. We mapped key promising leadership practices identified by our analysis and discuss how these can inform the development of leadership standards across staff and management in long-term care.

Using health technology assessment for better healthcare decisions.

Canadian health leaders can benefit from greater involvement in the design and production of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) through enhanced working relationships with HTA producers. The HTA producers and health leaders have a shared interest in the appropriate use of pharmaceuticals, healthcare devices, and procedures which benefit patients and support sustainable health systems. This article highlights the shared responsibility of HTA producers and decision makers in the appropriate use of these healthcare interventions through an examination of a HTA-informed policy and practice change in the management diabetes in elderly residents in long-term care settings. Consideration is given to the role of the co-responsibility model and LEADS in a Caring Environment framework (LEADS) in helping to facilitate partnerships between decision-makers and HTA producers in the realization of HTA-informed policy and practice.

LEADS Case Study: Partnering to Offer a Diabetes Management e-Learning Module to Nursing and Allied Health Staff.

Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) has the highest prevalence of diabetes in Canada. In 2011, Eastern Health (EH) selected diabetes as its chronic disease management focus in response to national statistics on the disease. In 2012, EH partnered with Saint Elizabeth (SE) to offer a free e-learning module on diabetes management to its healthcare providers. In this paper, the Engage Others domain of the LEADS in a Caring Environment Framework is used to describe the EH-SE partnership for this e-learning including strategies used to engage nursing and allied health staff.

Healthcare @ The Speed of Thought: A digital world needs successful transformative leaders.

In the wake of transformational change powered by the digital era, resultant leadership challenges and strategies essential for successful change, both tactical and cultural, are linked to defined capabilities within the Systems Transformation domain of the LEADS in a Caring Environment framework. Honed from experience, specific softer leadership behaviours supporting system transformation are both described and reinforced. Further, a matrix combining the LEADS framework capabilities with these more specific behaviours is offered as a planning tool that leaders may reflect upon and map out key activities associated with their sponsorship of significant change.

No need to grow my resumé? Mentorship and the intersection of learning between emerging and established leaders.

Active ongoing learning is a foundational expectation of every healthcare leader whether at the beginning or end of their career. In order for leaders to be nimble and responsive to the ongoing changes in the healthcare environment, they must actively engage in a multiplicity of learning activities. One way of ensuring diversity of learning is for emerging and established leaders to learn together through formal or informal mentoring. This article will explore that intersection and the value add of a reciprocal mentoring relationship where mentor and mentee roles become blurred and joint learning becomes the goal. Capabilities from the LEADS in a Caring Environment framework will be drawn upon, and a challenge is suggested for experienced leaders to go beyond resumé building and invest in emerging leaders, as ultimately it is an investment in their own learning and the future.

The mentorship imperative for health leadership.

Mentorship plays an important role in supporting the career development of health leaders. An examination of mentorship programs in different organizational settings provides a frame of reference to discuss and explore personal and professional mentorship experiences. Specifically, between October 2015 and April 2016, the Emerging Health Leaders (EHL) National Health Leadership Conference (NHLC) working group collaborated on an environmental scan of mentorship programs and activities to understand innovations in mentorship. In April 2016, EHL Toronto developed a mentor feedback survey using the LEADS in a Caring Environment framework to capture the varied experiences of mentors engaged in EHL Toronto's past mentorship events. A summary of this data presented at the 2016 NHLC situates a discussion on the highly interconnected and iterative nature of mentorship and leadership development in career progression. Mentorship is seen as a continuous journey of discovery, shared learning, and personal and professional development to achieve leadership excellence.

Code orange

The 21(st) century calls upon health leaders to recognize and respond to emerging threats and systemic emergency management challenges through transformative processes inherent in the LEADS in a caring environment framework. Using a grounded theory approach, this qualitative study explores key informant perspectives of leaders in emergency management across Canada on pressing needs for relevant systemic transformation. The emerging model points to eight specific attributes of transformational leadership central to emergency management and suggests that contextualization of health leadership is of particular import.