Who's Next? Developing High Potential Nurse Leaders for Nurse Executive Roles

Transformational leadership is an essential element of a high-performing organization in this era of rapid healthcare delivery system evolution. Specifically, recruiting and retaining top nurse executive talent is critical, as is development of senior nursing leadership talent, to ensure that a pipeline of prepared nurse executives exists for key leadership roles. A nurse executive residency program was developed to address the impending need for prepared, transformational nursing leaders. In this article, the terms chief nursing officer (CNO) and nurse executive are used interchangeably to describe this senior leadership role.