Nursing

From the staff development bookshelf: Leadership training for charge nurses

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, June 1, 2012

Leadership training is an essential component to training a charge nurse. Orienting charge nurses to the role means investing time in planning for leadership courses. This is purely dependent on the organizational role expectations. If your organization decides to train charge nurses to assume managerial responsibilities as well, then you may want to invest the time in planning a leadership training courses.

Your best starting point is to summarize the list of duties and responsibilities that you have outlined in your charge nurse job description or charter. Review this with the nursing leadership team and then categorize them into similar themes, for example, communication, delegation, and conflict resolution, to name a few. After you have done this, you will be able to assess the kinds of leadership training you want to offer your charge nurses. Of course, leadership training is intensive and ongoing, and your orientation program will cover only the highlights. But if you really want to sustain leadership development, then you will need to offer additional courses for your charge nurses to attend during their orientation period. Do not wait to ask your charge nurses to attend these courses too far out of their orientation. Ensure charge nurses attend all the leadership courses at least within the first 180 days of their new role.

At a minimum, provide training courses in:

  • Leadership
  • Team building
  • Conflict resolution
  • Communication
  • Developing talent


Book excerpt adapted from Charge Nurse Program Builder: Tools for Developing Unit Leaders by Tammy L. Berbarie, BA, RN, RN-BC

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