Leadership Competencies: Knowledge, Skills, and Aptitudes Nurses Need to Lead Organizations Effectively

The healthcare workplace is comparable to what a person sees when looking through a kaleidoscope: as the moments pass, an endless variety of patterns emerges. Undesirable patterns that have materialized include the widely publicized shortage of nurses in the workforce and the high rates of turnover among nurses. Healthcare organizations increasingly depend on recruitment and retention of nurse-managers to reverse these trends.

Critical care nurses become leaders through a variety of routes, many of which do not include formal managerial training or education. To produce positive results, critical care leaders need effective strategies to manage departmental operations and inspire staff. One strategy used by chief nursing officers, professional nursing associations, and employers is to design and implement formalized critical care leadership and managerial training programs that are evidence based and results oriented. In “Leadership Research in Business and Health Care,” Vance and Larson¹ report an underuse of evidence-based research...