PMID: 12131810
Issn Print: 0363-3624
Publication Date: 2002/07/01
Transformational Leadership in Nursing Education
Mary H. Hill
+ Author Information
Author Information: University of Mississippi School of Nursing, Jackson, Miss.
Excerpt
The healthcare delivery system is changing. Professional nurses face one of the greatest challenges of all times: facilitating organizational changes within the healthcare system to meet society’s demands for increased access, increased quality, and decreased cost of healthcare. 1 Transforming nursing education programs to ensure that students have the requisite knowledge and skills to meet the healthcare needs of consumers in the 21st century begins with leaders in nursing education. These leaders must prepare students to practice in a healthcare arena characterized by shifts in demographic trends and diversity, emergence of new information and communication technologies, alternative and complementary therapies, genomics, population-based and managed care, nursing shortages, and globalization of healthcare. 2 In addition, there is growing debate about higher education’s ability to respond to the needs of modern society. Financial and physical accessibility and the relevance of program offerings in the information age are under increased scrutiny. 3 There is a pressing need for nursing education programs to craft different ways to meet the needs of consumers in a knowledge-intensive world.
Healthcare leaders have responded to new demands by redefining their vision, restructuring, redesigning patient care delivery systems, broadening services, and increasing linkage of services to communities. For nursing education to produce a workforce capable of keeping pace with change while preserving and protecting the public’s health, leaders must be willing to adopt lessons in transformation learned from the corporate world. 4
A conceptual framework for corporate transformation, developed by R. H. Miles,consists of four major concepts: energy, vision, alignment, and process architecture. This framework also emphasizes the need for a transformational leader as its pivotal force. These principles can be applied by nursing administrators and faculty as a means to transform nursing education from its current state to one of broader, transcendent vision.
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