Importance of leadership skills for nursing professionals

Abstract

Developing leadership skills for nurses is very important for achieving sustainable development goals in health sector. For a better health care, nurses have to lead from the front moving beyond their routine work. Providing leadership skills to nurses is the need of the hour. However, there is a huge gap in leadership role expected from the nurses and the skills imparted to them in nursing schools and in-service. Various nursing organizations should take a lead to fill the gap. There can be several approaches to impart leadership skills to nurses. Three-domain model of managing self, leading teams and adapting to changing environment is a useful approach that can be easily applied to build capacity among nurses. Six essential skills have been identified as priority for nursing professionals to become effective leaders, which are listening and communication skills, emotional competencies, time management, conflict resolution, networking, and managing difficult colleagues.