Visionary Leadership in Healthcare: Excellence in Practice, Policy, and Ethics

Awarded first place in the 2022 AJN Book of the Year Awards in Nursing Management and Leadership!

This book informs healthcare leaders to implement leadership theories at the micro and macro systems level. At a micro level, it explains how leaders build and maintain a healthy work environment at the individual or team levels. At the macro level, the book discusses leadership's role in facilitating change at the organizational, health system, national, global, and even planetary levels. It also expands leadership knowledge on how leaders can influence and transform practice, including policy change, disaster management, political and social determinants of health, diversity, equity, inclusion, and the Ethics of Belonging. Each chapter has a section to introduce how to integrate theories into practice.

This book is timely, especially during this challenging time of pandemic. The chapters address ways to nurture a healthy work environment, mitigate organizational trauma, foster resilience, improve interprofessional collaboration, and promote exceptional patient experiences. The book gathers great minds in healthcare to make it unique from others. Each chapter uses a collective voice to shape the future of healthcare. The authors provide practical strategies for healthcare leaders to face the challenges regarding innovation, complexity, systems, and partnership in healthcare.

The book comprises five parts, which support leadership development in clinical practice or academic settings. With an emphasis on collaboration and partnerships, it moves away from hierarchical forms of leadership to more engaged, open, equitable, inclusive, authentic, and caring styles. Following is a brief introduction of the five parts.

Part 1 presents leadership theories in organizations. There are four chapters in this part.

Part 2 addresses healthy work environments. The four chapters in this part support readers in establishing and promoting organizational culture and environments.

Part 3 introduces and explains ways to apply novice leadership theories to practice.

Part 4 is about collaboration, leading change, and innovation.

Part 5 is about envisioning the future of healthcare leadership.

Finally, this book guides readers to explore leadership possibilities and prospects from different standpoints. Our interpretation of leadership continues to grow. Through this leadership book, we hope readers create a vision beyond our current systems toward a global, life-sustaining perspective, inspired and moved to actions that promote the transformation and revolution of healthcare by leading to sustainable health and humanity.