Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) play a critical role in ensuring the implementation of high-quality evidence based care, improved patient outcomes, and reduced health care delivery costs. Professional certification is one way we distinguish our unique contributions and advanced practice nursing expertise from other advanced practice roles. This first edition of the book represents a compilation of Clinical Nurse Specialist practice knowledge contributed by respected clinicians from across the nation for certification examination preparation. The book incorporates content from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Adult-Gerontology Clinical Nurse Specialist (AGCNS) Population Focused Competencies and the American Association of Critical Care Nurses Scope and Standards for CNS Practice. It begins with an introduction to the current AGCNS examination options, test plans and processes, as well as test taking strategies for success. The remainder of the book organizes test plan subject matter according to the three spheres of impact of CNS practice. The book includes twelve chapters presenting the overview, pathophysiology, etiology, assessment, diagnosis, treatment/management, and related pharmacology content according to each body system. It addresses the nurse and nursing practice sphere of impact. Relevant content includes age-related response to illness and adult-gerontology population specific practice standards for care and advocacy of the older adult. Emphasis is placed upon culturally competent care and safe care transitions. Nursing practice content includes consultation, collaboration, education, mentoring and communication skills. Nurse and nursing practice advocacy topics review public policy, professional practice issues, and ethical concerns. The book covers systems and systems leadership competencies of the CNS. Relevant content involves quality improvement principles, safety initiatives, financial stewardship, organizational level program development and systems change. Clinical inquiry subject matter covers evidence- based practice, research methodology, and skills for dissemination of CNS work.

This book offers leadership lessons for aspiring nurse leaders from luminaries in business, medicine, philanthropy, government, academia, research, and health care. It offers practical advice, lessons learned, and testimonials as to how nurses can prepare themselves for leadership, which in turn, will help them to provide exceptional patient care. As per the report of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the heightened roles of the professional nurse allow nurses of all practices to more fully develop their leadership skills. Nurse leaders are moving the interprofessional collaboration agenda forward by serving in key leadership positions. A nurse leader who led public research in the Kent State University and Bowling Green State University challenged the common perception that successful leaders are born, complete with the requisite temperament and talents. Nurses who play leadership roles can fill in research on health care policy formulation and implementation that will change the course of health care payment, delivery, and quality. The book discusses nurse research leadership from an economist’s perspective, hiring leaders to understand leadership, and nursing leadership lessons from an association executive’s perspective, from a physician’s chief executive officer’s perspective, from a nursing friend’s perspective and from a collaborative team’s perspective. The book also highlights nursing leadership’s contributions to safety and quality, how leadership can usher in health reforms and achieve better health for all people, and advancing the cause of transformational nurse leadership.

Nurse mentors can inspire and “champion” other nurses, as well as model and imprint the highest standards of excellence. This book provides insight for protégés and mentors on using mentoring to build new generations of successful nurses. It covers a quick history of why mentoring is important, and how a protégé can identify and mentor. It also contains the necessary tools to help novice nurses benefit from mentor support through difficult and sometimes frightening and confusing times. The first two chapters discuss what it means to be a professional nurse, the difference between a career and an occupation, and present the historical background of the mentor connection and mentoring relationships in nursing, different types of support relationships and mentors. Mentor intelligence has three characteristics or competencies namely mentoring mentality, mentoring lens and mentoring momentum. Chapter four explains how to create a Personal Mentor Action Plan, types of mentors and where to find them, selection process of the mentor and the protégé, and how to inventory individuals and groups as potential mentors. After dealing with the factors leading to success and failure and cultivating a nurse’s potential, the book describes the need of networking as an essential marketing tool. The book concludes by presenting tips to increase mentor intelligence after talking about healthy mentor-protégé relationship and mentor leadership.

Growing numbers of nurses are working in long-term care and playing a major role in the provision of long-term care services. This book provides an overview of the unique aspects of long-term care with a specific focus on nurses working in nursing home and assisted living settings. It offers a review of the unique aspects and settings for long-term care, special needs of the population served, and clinical challenges. The book is divided into five parts. The first part provides the basics of long-term care with chapters covering nursing responsibilities, regulations, and cultural change. The nursing process is discussed in Part II, which focuses on the minimum data set (MDS), assessment needs beyond the MDS, assessment skills, creative care plans, person-centered care and family care. The challenges involved in clinical settings such as promotion of medication safety, and reduction of medication errors and common risks are dealt with in the third section. As a significant number of individuals who need long-term care services have cognitive impairment, Section IV is devoted to the care of residents with dementias. Management skills, legal risks, and issues pertaining to surveys are presented in Section V. In recognition of the stresses that can arise in long-term care nursing, a chapter is dedicated to the important topic of self-care.

The author of this book has effectively filled many roles in her career: psychiatric nurse, educator, dean, policy maker, president, chair, author, leader, mentor and, as the author would proudly note, gadfly. There are two roles in which the author has particularly distinguished herself and serve as the foundation for the second edition of her book, The Growth and Development of Nurse Leaders. The first is leader and the second is mentor. In this book, the author blends the roles of leader and mentor. To this end, the author predictably offers practical insights into effective leadership strategies—some to be expected in books on leadership, such as strategic planning, relationship building, mentoring, giving feedback, building a community of learning, using and portraying data, and securing resources. Other topics are more surprising and thought-provoking, such as recognizing and managing the shadow side of our personalities, neediness and failure as a leader, pretending as a leadership strategy, managing anger, and “the vision thing”. As to mentoring, when the author was president-elect of STTI in the mid-1980s, she introduced the concept of “orchestrating a career,” and has presented often—and popularly—on this topic. In the ensuing years, the author has written about the various career stages, encouraging nurses (and women) to be optimistic and exert leadership to enrich their own experiences and those of others, taking the long view. The author speaks about nurse as careerist and, in the book, outlines her model on career stages and mentoring needs with its five stages (from preparation through being a gadfly, or wise woman). The book offers a cumulative reflection on the career-long journey of a leader and mentor who has achieved international impact. It offers each of us, regardless of our career stage, profound insights into and options for our own journeys to effective leadership.

Effective health communication is the result of a complex process that begins with understanding the theories related to various interdependent and interrelated communication disciplines. This book is intended to serve as a source of information, primarily as a stimulant for interaction, exploration, application, reflection, and self–assessment. To assist the reader in better assimilating and utilizing these disciplines, each chapter provides real and/or hypothetical examples that can be assessed and analyzed. The first chapter is an introduction and is followed by a chapter on health care pedagogy, which explores all aspects of American health care and its impact on a wide variety of health communication contexts and audiences. Another chapter focuses on interpersonal and gendered communication which is important to interpersonal relationship development and maintenance. Provider–patient communication is interpersonal, and differences in cultures potentially impact provider–patient communication. Ethical communication in clinical practice is critical to informed and collaborative decision making and enhances provider–patient interpersonal relationships. Leadership communication theories help the health care providers to understand and potentially apply in their various roles, situations, and/or teams. The book also discusses risk management vis–à–vis effective verbal, nonverbal, written communication policies, palliative care and end–of–life communication.

Nursing’s issues are longstanding, unresolved, and troubling, and hurt their professional image and patient care. Support for nurses is readily available to make the necessary changes now, under the strong leadership of the nurse manager. In order to do so, however, the nurse manager’s role must change significantly and quickly. This book provides a quick access to hard-hitting insights and strategies for a back-to-basics approach to managing professional practice no matter what is happening around a nurse manager. It is divided into five parts. The first part addresses the need for nurse managers to change how they manage and lead in a changing practice setting. Chapters introduce evolving leadership and managerial practices, and discuss the new competencies that are no longer on the horizon but present for managers and staff. The second part discusses the reality that change is constant and continues to impact everyone. Chapters deal with the aura of uncertainty lurking in the corners of every workplace and how to help staff manage it and the intergenerational staff by deemphasizing generational differences. Another chapter describes the chaos and confusion that can erupt when staff members are caught in the middle between the old way and the new. The third part describes different situations and some of the fascinating characters whom the nurse manager will have the privilege of managing. In the fourth part of the book, term work-life balance is discussed, with an acknowledgment of the influence of recent literature suggesting that creating harmony and a sense of wellbeing in the workplace and at home is a realistic goal. The final part provides the list of the concepts and actions that can give managers a jumpstart.

This book on leadership and management includes all of the basic content that registered nurse (RN) -to- bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) students need. It is organized into 5 parts comprising 17 chapters. Part I provides introductory information such as leadership attributes, leadership and management roles in professional nursing, and foundational aspects of leadership. Part II discusses leadership skills that are essential to the practice of nursing. Those skills include handling stress, setting priorities, managing time, communication, accountability, delegation, teams, problem solving, decision-making, and confliict resolution. Given the need for nurses to lead us to a preferred healthcare future, Part III focuses on leading change. The book introduces the readers to the factors that influence organizational culture, innovation, change, power, politics, and managing quality and safety. Part IV concentrates on the business aspect of healthcare by reviewing how to manage human and fiscal resources. Finally, Part V of the book helps the reader to contemplate his or her evolution as a professional by discussing how to integrate leadership and management competencies into his or her nursing practice. Although one book cannot cover all aspects of leadership and management, our goal is to provide a core framework and useful skills and strategies to successfully lead nursing and healthcare forward. Each chapter of the book contains essential information that acknowledges the prior learning experience of the practicing nurse who is now an RN-to-BSN or RN-to-master of science in nursing student. Each chapter begins with a brief overview of specific leadership and management topics. The book presents case scenarios throughout the chapters to help readers apply the information to practical situations. It provides concise and application-based examples that help promote selfgrowth as a professional.

This book helps readers to learn how to become an effective nursing home administrator. First and foremost, the nursing home administrator is the leader of the facility. His or her management style impacts facility life every day. The book explores what management is: what managers do and how to think and function as a manager. The art of management is broken down into its basic functions: forecasting, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, controlling quality, innovating, and marketing. Each of these basic functions is explored in depth. When the reader has mastered an understanding of these functions, he or she is prepared with the basic skills needed to be the administrator of a facility. The book then explains how to plan employment needs and to recruit, train, evaluate, pay, and discipline staff and how the financial system works and the risks assumed in operating a health care facility. The administrator functions within the framework of federal, state, and local laws. The major laws that control day-to-day life in the facility are explored, such as labor laws, workplace safety laws, and the Americans with Disabilities accessibility guidelines for nursing facilities. Successfully administering a nursing home is one of the most complex and challenging tasks that can be undertaken and one of the most rewarding professional commitments available in the health care field. The nursing home administrator and the director of nursing are uniquely responsible for the quality of care and quality of life of the residents/patients and staff in their facility. The licensed nursing home administrator is qualified to be the successful administrator of a hospital and all the health care organizations in the long-term care continuum: life care communities, home health agencies, hospice, assisted living, and senior living centers.

The intent of this book is to provide useful knowledge and practical applications to ease the work of leading or working in a hospital-based nursing research program. It contains principles that apply to all sizes of hospitals, as well as hospital systems that may be spread out over multiple states or be contained in one area. The book describes how nursing research provides new evidence for nursing practice that improves clinical outcomes, changes the culture of the organization, creates new leadership roles for nurses, offers opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, enhances patient safety, improves nurse and patient satisfaction, and leads to positive branding of the hospital and the nursing department. Nursing leadership can create (or support) a vision for nursing research based on the benefits that are central to the hospital’s strategic mission and goals. An essential element of setting the foundation and planning, growing, and nurturing a nursing research program is to demonstrate how the program aligns with the strategic plan (vision, mission, and goals) of nursing. The three foundational elements of strong nursing research programs personnel, intranet resources, and a nursing research department database are interconnected and should be available to the entire nursing department, including non-nurse providers and administrators, because important research questions can come from anyone on the team. The nursing research department database is an electronic system of input and storage of direct and indirect data important to the development, conduct, translation, and dissemination of nursing research.