Doctoral Nursing education for transformational leadership in a global context after pandemic.

Abstract

The pace of change in the world is unprecedented, calling for nurse leaders who are responsive to new workplace environments, which require new strategies that question prevailing assumptions. Doctoral education in nursing must be reframed to prepare leaders with new skills to transform the organizational culture in which care delivery takes place. What are the essential elements of doctoral education that promote and enable transformation, that changing of the worldview which offers the ability to lead in a dynamic way? This article gives updated review on these phenomena. Leadership that can move people as well as organizations to transformation is a key strategy for advancing nursing in a global context. It becomes an essential component of nursing doctoral curricula in the rapidly developing global healthcare environment. Changes in healthcare delivery, advances in information sharing, the technology revolution, societal changes and development in organizational theory combine to drive the necessity of new leadership models. Expectations in the workplace, whether practice settings or academia, have shifted leadership from transactional to transformative models, emphasizing the journey of self-awareness as a central concept. Doctoral education prepares leaders concerned with analysis of the context of nursing practice, and thus, is driven by the need to provide a new generation of leaders. The emergence of transformational leadership satisfies the needs of the workers at all levels of the organization, offering meaning and purpose necessary for satisfaction and retention, outcomes that are critical for achieving the organization’s mission.