An integrative review of leadership competencies and attributes in advanced nursing practice.
Maud Heinen, Catharina van Oostveen, Jeroen Peters and 2 others
PMID 31162695WHAT IT FOUND
This review identified 30 leadership competencies for advanced practice nurses, mostly focused on clinical and systems roles.
Very few competencies addressed health policy leadership, leaving a gap in preparing nurses to influence healthcare decisions at the political level.
Key findings
01The synthesis identified 30 core leadership competencies, with the highest number designated to the clinical and systems leadership domains.
02Competencies related to the health policy domain were minimally present, with only two identified, and they were described as abstract.
03Most included studies originated from the United States, Australia, Canada, the UK, and Finland, which may limit the international representativeness of the findings.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Twenty-four articles identified during screening were not available in full text, potentially introducing selection bias. The included studies had varying designs and methodological quality, with quality appraisal not used to exclude low-quality studies. Most studies originated from the United States and Australia, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other cultural or healthcare contexts. The distinction between knowledge, skills, and attributes was sometimes unclear in the source literature.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the identified competencies as evidence that leadership training improves patient outcomes. This is a review of existing competency definitions and frameworks, not a meta-analysis of intervention effectiveness. The paper explicitly states that further research is needed to establish the relationship between these leadership practices and nursing-sensitive patient outcomes.