Dear Nurse Leaders,
As a COO/CNO and an Editor-in-Chief, like many of you, I am working with amazing nursing colleagues and nurse leaders as we navigate these unchartered times. The July/August 2020 edition of JONA is a good example of presenting articles focused on the here and now, like emergency preparedness competencies, as well as the critical role we play in assuring the next generation of nursing leaders in developing succession planning strategies.
In "Emergency Preparedness Competencies Among Nurses: Implications for Nurse Administrators", Dr. Charleen McNeill and co-authors present a study looking at self-reported professional emergency preparedness competence among nurses. This submission was in the development stage during the early part of the pandemic and I felt it was relevant not only to our ongoing responsibility for competence but to the preparedness needs that have been identified during pandemic response. This study revealed signficant weakness in nurses' self reported competence. Lack of confidence in emergency preparedness also was associated with
clinical nurses not reporting to work after a disaster is declared. Further research is indicated in the area of education for essential staff to increase cmpetence. Perhaps our reliance on traditional models of education in this regard are leaving us short in truly preparing nurses and others.
A question for future study perhaps?
Dr. Gaurdia Banister and co-authors present a study, "African American Nurses' Perspectives on a Leadership Development Program" where they assess the impact of a professional development experience with a group of bachelors prepared African American nursing students. The program involved active
engagement in persoanl and professional nursing leadership. A key component was mentorship from established African American nurse leaders for the student participants. The program which is described in the article is named "Clinical Leadership Collaborative for Diversity in Nursing". I think readers will see opportunities in the program design to relate to other under-represented populations within
nursing.
Morris, Wood and Dang present an article describing a formal succession planning program. In "Development and Evaluation of a Nurse Leadership Succession Planning Strategy in an Academic Medical Center", the authors describe the "Nurse Manager Development Program". The authors describe participant selection, the tools used and the positive results the organization was able to realize.
Feel free to email me if you have a question or potential topic of interest to our readers at jonaeditor@gmail.com. Our Guidelines for Authors are available on our website.
Melora Ferren, MSN, RN-BC, the Social Media Coordinator for JONA, continues to post weekly on Twitter highlighting a topic from the journal. The Twitter address for JONA is #JONANurseLeader.
Karen S. Hill, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FACHE, FAAN
Editor-in-Chief
jonaeditor@gmail.com
