Leadership and nursing care management

The time is now for strong leadership and care management in nursing. Highlighted by a series of reports from the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM), it is clear that nurses matter to
health care delivery systems. Yet the United States is in the midst of a severe and continuing nurse shortage. Strong nurse leaders and administrators are important for clients (and their safety),
for delivery systems (and their viability), and for payers (and their solvency). Some have called this the Age of the Nurse, but pressures remain to balance cost and quality considerations in a complex, chaotic, and turbulent health care environment. Although society’s need for excellent nursing care remains the nurse’s constant underlying reason for existence, nursing is in reality much more than that. It is the Age of the Nurse precisely because nurses offer cost-effective expertise in solving problems related to the coordination and delivery of health care to individuals and populations in society.

Nurses are well prepared to lead clinical change strategies and to effectively manage the coordination and integration of interdisciplinary teams, population needs, and systems of care across the continuum. It can be argued that nursing is a unique profession in which the primary focus is caring—giving and managing the care that clients need. Thus
nurses are both health care providers and health care coordinators; that is, they have both clinical and managerial role components. Beginning with the first edition of Leadership and Nursing
Care Management, it has been this text’s philosophy that these two components can be discussed separately but in fact overlap. Because all nurses are involved in coordinating client care, leadership and management principles are a part of the core competencies they need to function in a complex health care environment.