Nursing Leadership Scope and Standards and Pathway to Excellence
By Edna Cadmus, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN; Christina Dempsey, DNP, MBA, RN, CENP, CNOR, FAAN; Katie Boston-Leary, PhD, MHA, MBA, RN, NEA-BC; and Melissa Bates, DNP, RN, CDCES
Nursing leadership is a longstanding and traditionally known nursing specialty practice that has a profound impact on the state of the nursing profession, patient-care delivery, outcomes, and healthcare overall. Establishing standards of practice and professionalism in nursing to describe the “who, what, where, when, why, and how” of professional nursing leadership that take into account all aspects of education, experience, setting, and population was clearly needed. Today, not only has the title of this body of work evolved from the original version published in 1988, but we’ve also revised many concepts, approaches, competencies, and expectations, as well as the definition of nursing leadership. This ideological and empirical evolution in nursing leadership is necessary to function optimally in today’s nursing praxis and to prepare nurse leaders for what’s to come in the not-so-distant future.
The Nursing Administration Scope and Standards has been recently retitled as Nursing Leadership Scope and Standards (NLSS), which serves as a guide to lead teams effectively and progressively into the future.1