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Competency in interprofessional communication is vital for health care providers to deliver quality health care (Institute of Medicine, 2010) and interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) settings require skilled communicators (Oelke, Thurston, & Arthur, 2013). Because nurses comprise the largest segment of professionals in the health care industry, it is important that nurses demonstrate interprofessional communication skills and feel empowered to lead IPCP environments. However, there is significant variability in practicing nurses' readiness and competency to engage in IPCP or lead interprofessional teams (Oelke et al., 2013). Hierarchical health system power structures that exclude empowered nurse leaders' challenge nurses' readiness and competency to lead IPCP (Rao, 2012). Therefore, enhancing IPCP team effectiveness requires that nurses accentuate their talent in building and sustaining relationships within their health care systems (Faulkner & Laschinger, 2008; Huber, 2013; Shirey, 2009). Given that nursing education only recently embraced interprofessional education (IPE), much of the current nursing workforce is naïve to the competencies required to engage in IPCP as full partners of health care teams (National League for Nursing, 2016).
IPCP is defined as various health care professionals' collective collaboration with patients, families, caregivers, and communities to produce superior care (World Health Organization, 2010). Interprofessional collaborative practice holds significant potential in achieving the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's triple aim to improve health care outcomes, decrease costs, and enhance the patient experience (Brandt, Lutfiyya, King, & Chioreso, 2014). To achieve these goals, nurses must develop leadership abilities to actively participate in IPCP decision making processes (Adeniran, Bhattacharya, & Adeniran, 2012).
Successful IPCP requires each team member to collaboratively function and effectively assume situational leadership roles. It is important to develop nurse leaders to engage in IPCP (Oelke et al., 2013). One way to develop nurse leader talents is through a nurse leader institute. This article describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a Nurse Leadership Institute (NLI) for nurses in primary care and acute care settings.
Overview
The NLI was dedicated to fostering nurse empowerment to facilitate skillful nurse functioning within an IPCP environment. The NLI year-long experience focused on developing nurse leadership tools that could be used by nurse leaders in interprofessional settings. From 2013 to 2016, three cohorts of nurses completed the NLI. This structured leadership program provided nurses with the opportunity...