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Abstract: Effective clinical leadership is offered as the key to healthy, functional and supportive work environments for nurses and other health professionals. However, as a concept it lacks a standard definition and is poorly understood. This paper reports on an integrative review undertaken to uncover current understandings of defining attributes of con- temporary clinical leadership in nursing. Data collection involved a search of relevant electronic databases for a 10-year period. Keywords for the search were 'clinical leadership' and 'nursing'. Ten research papers met the inclusion criteria for the integrative review. Analysis of these studies indicated clinical leadership attributes had a clinical focus, a follower/ team focus or a personal qualities focus; attributes necessary to sustain supportive workplaces and build the capacity and resilience of nursing workforces. The small number of research-based studies yielded for the review indicates the need for further research in the area of clinical leadership.
Keywords: clinical leadership, nursing workforce, work environment, integrative review
Leadership is a concept that has been vari- ously characterised, defined and discussed in the literature. As Curtis, de Vries, and Sheerin (2011) highlight, the many definitions of leader- ship reflect the various dimensions of the con- cept. For example, Davidson, Elliott, and Daly (2006) define leadership as a complex process involving goal setting, motivating and support- ing others to work towards collectively agreed- to goals. This view emphasises the capacity of a leader to motivate and influence others with- out the need for specific management skills. Conversely, Millward and Bryan (2005) insist that traditional management skills be integrated with skills in transformational change to ensure effective clinical leadership.
A decade into the 21st Century it is becom- ing increasingly apparent that effective leader- ship is an essential element in organisations and professional bodies to ensure that they maximise the extent to which they are able to achieve their strategic objectives in a society that has been aptly described as chaotic, complex, competitive and turbulent (McLean, 2007). Effective leader- ship in this context is no more important than in contemporary nursing, with nursing settings and workplaces being metaphorically likened to a 'perfect storm' (Curtin, 2007; Hinshaw, 2008; Jackson & Daly, 2010; Sanford, 2007; Yoder- Wise, 2007). As Yoder-Wise (2007) describes, perfect storms are the result of the...