COVID-19: A Personal and Professional Perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected millions of Americans, including health care staff. This article traces the experience of 1 nurse leader as she falls ill, only to learn that she has, indeed, been infected with the virus. She describes her 4-week quarantine, including the impact on her family and her attempts to continue to support her staff. As she recovers from the acute onslaught of COVID, the focus shifts back to her nurse leader role. In this role, she and her colleagues manage the logistics of caring for more than 150 COVID-positive patients a day in the 719-bed academic medical center. This included staffing the hospital, given the extreme challenges of staff availability limited by concerns such as school closings and at-risk family members. Now with the hospital's daily volume of COVID-positive patients greatly reduced, there is an opportunity to reflect on lessons learned, including what went well during the peak of the crisis and where there were opportunities. Leadership and staff are experiencing a sense of pride at their exceptional care of this complex population, even while exploring opportunities to be even better prepared should COVID erupt once again.

The CNO and Leading Innovation: Competencies for the Future.

Although innovation is critical to success in today's tumultuous environment, health care is slow to embrace it, and there is significant variability in strategic adoption of innovation across organizations. Nurse leaders do not need to be innovators themselves but must engage in, and have the ability to create, an organizational culture of innovation. Twenty-six leadership behaviors specific to innovation leadership were identified through a Delphi study to develop competencies as well as the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that support nurse leaders in acquiring or expanding the capability of nurse leaders to create a culture of innovation. It was demonstrated that nursing innovation experts were able to differentiate between general leadership behaviors and innovation leader behaviors. In addition, the need to acquire basic leadership competencies before mastering innovation leader competencies was identified. Five strategies to initiate or expand a culture of innovation in organizations were identified, including (1) assessment of organizational capacity for innovation; (2) acknowledgement of the responsibility of all leaders to create an innovation-rich environment; (3) provision of education, skill building, and coaching; (4) encouragement of an ongoing practice of innovation, even in the face of failure; and (5) development of a sustainable culture of innovation.

Nursing Leadership and Care Coordination: Creating Excellence in Coordinating Care Across the Continuum.

Continuum Care is different today from in the past. It requires care coordination with an emphasis on relationships and new roles. Nurses and nurse leaders must be located at the epicenter of developing strategies to align resources with patients and family along all points of the continuum.

Patient care management as a global nursing concern.

Effective and efficient patient management is important in all health care environments because it influences clinical and financial outcomes as well as capacity. Design of care management processes is guided by specific principles. Roles (e.g., case management) and tools (e.g., clinical paths) provide essential foundations while attention to outcomes anchors the process.

Retreats as a foundation for change. The Global Nursing Exchange as a retreat.

Innovation often emerges from an opportunity to retreat and reflect, from being away from normally hectic lives. Although retreats are often considered solitary events, when experienced with colleagues and friends, they can produce significant outcomes. Creative ideas, creative approaches to stubborn issues, and new links to colleagues are some of the benefits.