ERA+ Clinical Leadership in Nursing Education

Clinical leadership is essential for nurses to ensure safe and high-quality care, delivered efficiently within the current complex healthcare system with diminishing resources. However, clinical leadership is not well defined in nursing education curricula in Europe. Additionally, it is not well integrated into these curricula. Furthermore, clinical leadership remains a vague concept for many nurses in the field and nursing students. Leadership is often associated with hierarchical leadership rather than bedside leadership, which is essential for direct patient care and improving outcomes at the clinical level.

This project aims to develop a conceptual framework for clinical leadership, which will be used to strengthen nursing education curricula.

This initiative is funded by and is a two year KA2 Partnership in higher education project on clinical leadership in nursing education, with partners from Finland Portugal and Belgium.

This project aims to enhance understanding and implementation of clinical leadership in nursing education across Europe. The key expected outcomes include: a conceptual framework for bedside clinical leadership, a gap analysis tool to identify discrepancies between nursing education curricula and the competencies required for clinical leadership, an open access clinical leadership library with educational and training materials. The project seeks to better prepare nursing students for their future roles and strengthen clinical leadership across all partner countries and more broadly in Europe.

This framework will serve as the foundation for gap identification and the development of the clinical leadership library.

Firstly, an integrative literature review will be conducted.

The review will aim to clarify the definition of clinical leadership in nursing and the competencies required for effective clinical leadership. Secondly, the results of the literature review will be used to develop a preliminary version of the conceptual framework for clinical leadership in nursing, which will be discussed and validated with experts in the field from each project country. Finally, workshops for practitioners, educators, and nursing students will be held to gather their feedback on the framework, which will be finalized after the workshops.

The integrative literature review will be published in an open-access online journal. Other results will be disseminated through social media, blog posts, conference presentations, and a webinar, which will be held at the end of the project.

This package aims to bridge the gap between the clinical leadership framework and the current nursing education by assessing the integration of these competencies into current nursing training programs and identify areas requiring further emphasis.

For this purpose, we will conduct a SWOT analysis in each partner’s country, which will evaluate internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats in teaching curricula and methods related to clinical leadership. These results will be validated with experts in clinical leadership.

As expected outcomes we aim to identify a gap between the current nursing education situation and our clinical leadership framework, which will help to develop a roadmap of innovative teaching materials and methods tailored to address identified gap and facilitate the integration of clinical leadership principles into nursing education.

The Clinical Leadership Library, aims to enhance nursing education and foster effective clinical leadership by bridging gaps in current practices and equipping nursing professionals with essential skills. The primary objectives include integrating our innovative framework into contemporary nursing education, developing comprehensive teaching materials, and establishing a clinical leadership library. This library will provide educators, students, and practitioners with curated resources to enhance their understanding and proficiency in clinical leadership.

We will also conduct targeted workshops for stakeholders, integrating clinical leadership into simulation cases, communication exercises, and internship assessments. Partner-hosted events will raise awareness and provide practical tools for implementing clinical leadership.

Additionally, we aim to disseminate project outcomes through workshops, blog publications, and online platforms, sharing findings and resources with stakeholders beyond the project's scope.

Do you have any questions, comments or suggestions?

Please contact An Vandervoort (an.vandervoort@ucll.be), project leader of this study or Valerie Heymans (valerie.heymans@ucll.be), responsible of communication.

Contact Sandra Martin (Sandra.martin@ucll.be), responsible of the center of expertise Health Innovation.

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ERA+ Clinical Leadership in Nursing Education

An introduction

expected outcomes

A framework for clinical leadership

GAP identification between the clinical leadership framework and current nursing curricula

Open-access Clinical Leadership Library to bridge the gap between the framework and nursing curricula

Contact information

Dissemination