A Study on the development of leadership training program for first-line nurse managers (2000)

The health care environment becomes more competitive every day. It has fallen to nurse managers - from vice presidents of patient care to nurse managers and their assistants - to recruit and develop a workforce that successfully meets the needs of both patients and the organization. This means employees who demonstrate advanced critical thinking skills, creative problem solving, and sound decision making skills combined with clinical skills and patient advocacy. The environment which nurse managers create and the way they relate to their workforce, are pivotal to organizational viability. Especially leadership of first -line nurse managers contributes to the success of their organizations. First-line nurse managers are deserved to be one of the most administrative supervisors through the middle stratum in a hospital organization as being a manager in the field service if assessed from the overall aspects of hospital, as being an interim managers in the nursing department as well as being a supreme supervisor in a unit in terms of an organizational structure in the hospital. Similarly, as a compete leader, the first-line nurse managers have not only a professional which is qualified to perform a role of appropriate coordination with medical staff and key personnel but also hold an important key position a being responsible for performing his or her given role. The first-line nurse manager is expected to manage human and fiscal resources in ways not required before. While an identified need for well-prepared first-line nurse manager continues to plague the profession, first-line nurse managers often have difficulty providing the leadership required. The need leadership training to function effectively in their positions. But we hardly find a useful leadership training program for first-line nurse managers, therefore the purpose of this study was to developed the leadership training program for them. The steps of leadership program development were below: 1st step, 2 studies were done before develop a leadership program. One was done to ask to first-line nurse managers what they want to learn through leadership training, the other one was to ask the staff nurses what their opinions are for their first-line nurse managers leadership. 2nd step was searching other leadership programs contents. The results of this study were below: The total amount of hours is 24. Leadership training program contents are : Future of nursing profession (210min), understanding basic factor's of leadership and leadership theories(310 min), self understanding as first- line nurse managers(320 min), basic principle and practice of interpersonal relationship(210 min), assertiveness training, conflict management (180min), and group study(210min). This is challenging time to be a leader, especially in nursing. As nurse managers look toward the new millennium, it seems as through the same struggles are ahead that are behind. So nurse managers need to embrace change with a positive attitude. They need to demonstrate risk taking and support it in their staffs. All these things are possible that after they participate the leadership training program.