NLHS track competencies

1. Essential I: Background for Practice from Sciences and Humanities
   1. Recognizes that the master's-prepared nurse integrates scientific findings from nursing, biopsychosocial fields, genetics, public health, quality improvements, and organizational sciences for the continual improvement of nursing care across diverse settings.
2. Essential II: Organizational and Systems Leadership
   1. Recognizes that organizational and systems leadership are critical to the promotion of high quality and safe patient care. Leadership skills are needed that emphasize ethical and critical decision-making, effective working relationships, and a systems perspective.
3. Essential III: Quality Improvement and Safety
   1. Recognizes that a master's-prepared nurse must be articulate in the methods, tools, performance measures, and standards related to quality, as well as prepared to apply quality principles within an organization.
4. Essential IV: Translating and Integrating Scholarship into Practice
   1. Recognizes that the master's-prepared nurse applies research outcomes within the practice setting, resolves practice problems, works as a change agent, and disseminates results.
5. Essential V: Informatics and Healthcare Technologies
   1. Recognizes that the master's-prepared nurse uses patient-care technologies to deliver and enhance care and uses communication technologies to integrate and coordinate care.
6. Essential VI: Health Policy and Advocacy
   1. Recognizes that the master's-prepared nurse is able to intervene at the system level through the policy development process and to employ advocacy strategies to influence health and health care.
7. Essential VII: Interprofessional Collaboration for Improving Patient and Population Health Outcomes
   1. Recognizes that the master's-prepared nurse, as a member and leader of interprofessional teams, communicates, collaborates, and consults with other health professionals to manage and coordinate care.
8. Essential VIII: Clinical Prevention and Population Health for Improving Health
   1. Recognizes that the master's-prepared nurse applies and integrates broad, organizational, client-centered, and culturally appropriate concepts in the planning, delivery, management,and evaluation of evidence-based clinical prevention and population care and services to individuals, families, and aggregates/identified populations.
9. Essential IX: Master's-level Nursing Practice
   1. Recognizes that nursing practice, at the master's level, is broadly defined as any form of nursing intervention that influences healthcare outcomes for individuals, populations, or systems. Master's-level nursing graduates must have an advanced level of understanding of nursing and relevant sciencs as well as the ability to integrate this knowledge into practice. Nursing practice interventions include both direct and indirect care components.

Financial Management

1. Recognize the impact of reimbursement on revenue
2. Anticipate the effects of changes on reimbursement programs for patient care
3. Maximize care efficiency and throughput
4. Understand the relationship between value-based purchasing and quality outcomes with revenue and reimbursement
5. Create a budget
6. Monitor a budget
7. Analyze a budget and explain variance
8. Conduct ongoing evaluation of productivity
9. Forecast future revenue and expenses
10. Capital budgeting
    • Justification
    • Cost benefit analysis

Human Resource Management

1. Staffing needs
   • Evaluate staffing patterns/needs
   • Match staff competency with patient acuity
2. Manage human resources within the scope of labor laws
3. Apply recruitment techniques
4. Staff selection
   • Apply individual interview techniques
   • Apply team interview techniques
   • Select and hire qualified applicants
5. Scope of practice
   • Develop role definitions for staff consistent with scope of practice
   • Implement changes in role consistent with scope of practice
   • Orientation
   • Develop orientation program
   • Oversee orientation process
   • Evaluate effectiveness of orientation

Performance Improvement

1. Performance improvement
   • Identify key performance indicators
   • Establish data collection methodology
   • Evaluate performance data
   • Respond to outcome measurement findings
   • Comply with documentation requirements
2. Customer and patient engagement
   • Assess customer and patient satisfaction
   • Develop strategies to address satisfaction issues
3. Patient safety
   • Monitor and report sentinel events
   • Participate in root cause analysis
   • Promote evidence-based practices
   • Manage incident reporting
4. Maintain survey and regulatory readiness
5. Monitor and promote workplace safety requirements
6. Promote intra/interdepartmental communication

Foundational Thinking Skills

1. Apply systems thinking knowledge as an approach to analysis and decision-making
2. Understand complex adaptive systems definitions and applications

Technology

1. Information technology—understand the effect of IT on patient care and delivery systems to reduce work load
   • Ability to integrate technology into patient care processes
   • Use information systems to suport business decisions

Strategic Management

1. Facilitate change
   • Assess readiness for change
   • Involve staff in change processes
   • Communicate changes
   • Evaluate outcomes
2. Project management
   • Identify roles
   • Establish timelines and milestones
   • Allocate resources
   • Manage project plans
3. Contingency plans
   • Manage internal disaster or emergency planning and execution
   • Manage external disaster or emergency planning and execution
4. Demonstrate written and oral presentation skills
5. Manage meetings effectively
6. Demonstrate negotiation skills
7. Influence the practice of nursing through participation in professional organizations
8. Collaborate with other service lines
9. Shared decision-making
   • Establish vision statement
   • Facilitate a structure of shared governance
   • Implement structures and processes
   • Support a just culture

Appropriate Clinical Practice Knowledge

(Determined by specific role and institution)

1. Each role and institution has expectations regarding the clinical knowledge and skill required of the role. These expectations should be established for the specific individual based on organizational requirements.

Human Resource Leadership Skills

1. Performance management
   • Conduct staff evaluations
   • Assist staff with goal-setting
   • Implement continual performance development
   • Monitor staff for fitness for duty
   • Initiate correct actions
   • Terminate staff
2. Staff development
   • Facilitate staff education and needs assessment
   • Ensure competency validation
   • Promote professional development of staff
   • Facilitate leadership growth among staff
   • Identify and develop staff as part of a succession-planning program
3. Staff retention
   • Assess staff satisfaction
   • Develop and implement strategies to address satisfaction issues
   • Promote retention
   • Develop methods to reward and recognize staff

Relationship Management and Influencing Behaviors

1. Manage conflict
2. Situation management
   • Identify issues that require immediate attention
   • Apply principles of crisis management to handle situations as necessary
3. Relationship management
   • Promote team dynamics
   • Mentor and coach staff and colleagues
   • Apply communication principles
4. Influence others
   • Encourage participation in professional action
   • Role model professional behavior
   • Apply motivational theory
   • Act as change agent
   • Assist others in developing problem-solving skills
   • Foster a healthy work environment
5. Promote professional development
   • Promote stress management
   • Apply principles of self-awareness
   • Encourage evidence-based practice
   • Apply leadership theory to practice

Diversity

1. Cultural competence
   • Understand the components of cultural competence as they apply to the workforce
2. Social justice
   • Maintain an environment of fairness and processes to support it
3. Generational diversity
   • Capitalize on differences to foster highly effective work groups

Personal and Professional Accountability

1. Personal growth and development
   • Manage through education advancement, continuing education, career planning, and annual self-assessment and action plans
2. Practice ethical behavior
   • Including practice that supports nursing standards and scopes of practice
3. Involvement in professional associations
   • Including membership and involvement in an appropriate professional association that facilitates networking and professional development
4. Achieve certification in an appropriate field/specialty

Career Planning

1. Know your role
   • Understand current job description/requirements and compare those to current level of practice
2. Know your future
   • Plan a career path
3. Position yourself
   • Develop a career path/plan that provides direction while offering flexibility and capacity to adapt to future scenarios

Personal Journey Disciplines

1. Apply action learning
   • Apply techniques of "action learning" to problem solve and personally reflect on decisions
2. Engage in reflective practice
   • Include knowledge of, and active practice of reflection as a leadership behavior

Reflective Practice Reference Behaviors/Tenets

Utilizing a set of guidelines and tenants that facilitate reflective practice; these may be individually developed or can be based on specific models developed by others; below are the "Dimensions of Leadership" developed by the Center for Nursing Leadership which offer an example of a set of guidelines/tenants that can be used as a tool to guide personal reflection of an individual's leadership behaviors.

1. Holding the truth: The presence of integrity as a key value of leadership
2. Appreciation of ambiguity: Learning to function comfortably amid the ambiguity of our environments
3. Diversity as a vehicle to wholeness: The appreciation of diversity in all its forms: race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, generational, the dissenting voice, and differences of all kinds
4. Holding multiple perspectives without judgment: Creation and holding a space so that multiple perspectives are entertained before decisions are rendered
5. Discovery of potential: The ability to search for and find the potential in ourselves and in others
6. Quest for adventure towards knowing: Creating a constant state of learning for the self, as well as an organization
7. Knowing something of life: The use of reflective learning and translation of that learning to the work at hand
8. Nurturing the intellectual and emotional self: Constantly increasing one's knowlege of the world and the development of the emotional self
9. Keeping commitments to oneself: Creating the balance that regenerates and renews the spirit and body so that it can continue to grow