LEADERSHIP
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Nurse leadership in the 2020s Nurse leaders are critical stabilizers and catalysts in the fast-changing healthcare sector, write Cindy Campbell, Mike Canning and Mara Green
Today’s healthcare sector is being transformed by dramatic shifts that show no signs of slowing. Indeed, they are set to accelerate, challenging current assumptions and models – from where care is provided, to who will deliver it and how; and ultimately to how we will pay for it. In the US and elsewhere, the government’s role continues to expand, increasing paperwork and regulatory compliance requirements. Services and procedures continue to move toward outpatient settings, with nearly 60% of outpatient surgeries expected to take place in ambulatory service centers (ASCs) by 2020, according to the industry specialists, Becker’s ASC Review. Scientific and technological advances are improving the prediction of disease susceptibility, providing earlier detection, and allowing for tailored therapies – creating a greater need for health teams to work more collaboratively. Patients are taking a greater role as consumers, making their own healthcare decisions and shopping for the best value. Improving quality and the patient experience, while also lowering costs, is leading to a growing trend of linking Dialogue Q2 2020
reimbursements to patient outcomes. These important shifts are coupled with challenges relating to a critical group of staff in the healthcare sector: nurses. There is a growing shortage of nurses at a time when need is growing, driven by the expanded requirements of an ageing population and the large number of nurses reaching retirement age. Those reaching retirement are being replaced by novice-level nurses fresh from universities. In a world of increasing change and complexity, this entrylevel experience base represents an experience gap, which demands more floor-level guidance and mentoring from nurse leaders. These intersecting trends are creating a perfect storm, exponentially changing and accelerating the demands placed on nurses, and making the role of those who lead them – nurse leaders – more critical and expansive than ever before.
T-shaped leadership
Like many other professions, these new demands mean that nurse leaders need to become more ‘T-Shaped’ (see graphic, page 42). T-shaped