Promoting Nursing Leadership in ProInCa
Good nursing leadership and updated leadership competencies play a crucial rolein the modernization of healthcare and nursing system in Kazakhstan. The ProInCa –project aims to promote nursing leadershipcapacity in health care facilities and in the medicalunivercities in Kazakhstan. In the project work package 2.4 a nursing leadership competence survey was conducted in spring 2018, with 256 health care leaderrespondents. The survey wasbased on international research findings, and different nursing leadership competency models. Based on the results the project organized two intensive workshops with the topic “Modernization of Nursing Leadership”. During the first workshop, the EU and Kazakh universities together with health care leaders created leadership training materials.
The materials were piloted in Astana, where the Intensive workshop II took place at the end of February 2019. There were close to 70 participants(49 nurse leaders, 18persons from the higher medical colleges and medical universities). According to the feedback, the participants found the piloted training materialsinteresting and beneficial. Especially group work and work based training and learning materials were seen useful, and could be emphasized even more in the final material. The week as a whole was considered as an excellent learning and group work experience.
As the modernization of the healthcare challenges nurse leaders, the need of the nurse leaders’ association was discussed. The participants decided to launch the initiation of the association in order to provide the support for the nurse leaders. The association would provide a forum for nurse leaders to build the nurse leaders’ community in order to interact and share ideas, and to drive the interests of its members in all means.Nurse leaders’ associations have long history internationally. For examplethe American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE http://www.aone.org) has provided leadership, professional development, advocacy and research to advance nursing practice and patient care, promote nursing leadership excellence and shape public policy for health care. In addition,the European Nurse Directors Association (ENDAhttp://www.enda-europe.com/en)was founded for the purpose of building a network between nurse directors throughout Europe.
The main conclusion from the Intensive workshop II was that with the good cooperation between nursing leaders, higher medical colleges and universities, the nursing leaders and different health care organizationsare able to develop the needed nursing leadership capacity in practice, and promote modernization of healthcare.