Abstract
Unless we set out clearly the evidence for the role of nursing leadership, both in current services and in the design and delivery of new services for the future, we risk losing or missing out on massive contribution and further potential of nursing leadership – not just right now, we also risk losing the opportunity and value nursing could offer for the future of healthcare, population health and economic development locally, nationally, and globally.
Nurses are part of the fabric of global healthcare. Nursing’s contribution is significant and is applied widely across services, accounting for the largest proportion of the health workforce and a substantial proportion of healthcare costs (World Health Organization [WHO], 2025). Nursing impacts directly on patients and service user quality and safety, service efficiency and use of resources, and on staff and the experience of staff. Optimal mobilisation of nursing impact in leading care through effective professional leadership is therefore crucial to driving cost-effectiveness and value in healthcare delivery.
At an individual team and organisational level, the leadership role of nurses is not clearly described or understood nor its impact routinely measured (Ladish, 2024). Models of nursing leadership deployment involving a range of nurse manager and ‘corporate nursing roles’ are influenced more by history, health service management trend, oversight demand or affordability than evidence of impact and effectiveness.
We still have no systematic mechanism at organisation level for knowing whether that organisation’s nursing leadership is effective and achieving maximum impact on team, service, organisation and patient outcomes. We know relatively little about the ‘particulars’ of effective nursing leadership and how it should be developed, what it looks and feels like, specifically how it impacts and how its characteristics might be described and assessed (Adams et al., 2021; Aiken et al, 2021; Kohnen et al., 2024; Lebrague, 2024).
The impact of nursing leadership is context dependent, and the existence of specific conditions will enable it to be best further developed, to thrive or flounder. Again, these conditions are not adequately described, understood, measured and assessed with specific reference to the effectiveness of nursing as a profession, as opposed to the experience of nurses as individual human resources. Even where published research is available, it has not been systematically applied over time (Labrague 2025; Ladish, 2025).
Despite success in establishing our statutory role at Board level in the NHS, nursing leadership and the leadership role of nursing are often seen as optional or desirable rather than fundamental and essential. The profession increasingly does not feel it is fully recognised, valued, and capitalised on in the design and delivery services, especially the leadership role nursing can and must play in future healthcare.
Health services, and our citizens, are not getting the best value from nursing leadership. The availability of a robust evidence base and the ability to use it systematically across services and organisations would be transformational for the nursing profession, for health service efficiency, and for patients and the public.
This is why this journal is planning a special edition for autumn 2026 focussing on nursing leadership. The intention is to generate a unique and contemporary ‘state of the nation’ on nursing leadership, how best to develop it and its research evidence base.
We want you to get involved and invite contributions from researchers – nurse academics, policymakers, and practitioners across the whole spectrum of nursing roles and setting to engage in a collaborative process towards advancing our understanding of nurse leadership. Our aim is to gather, curate, and share contributions generated through a wide range of knowledge forms and to present these in publication online as a vehicle for further engagement, debate, and to influence the content and direction of future research, education, and practice development.
If you are interested, we would be delighted if you responded to the journal’s call for papers.
