Developing Nurse Well-being and Leadership - Sponsored by Johnson & Johnson

 

About the Grant

Through generous funding from the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, AACN has developed this tool kit to help support sustainable improvements in nurse well-being through curricular innovation and competency-based learning activities.  Further, the tool kit provides resources addressing core competencies of the AACN Essentials related to fostering personal health, resilience, and well-being, lifelong learning, and leadership development.

Advisory Group

The advisory group, comprised of experts in wellness, resilience, and leadership from academia and practice, was asked to: 

  • Define how best to prepare nurse leaders with strong skills in the areas of resilience, self-care, and well-being.  
  • Recommend learning resources, tools, and strategies for building leadership competencies essential to fostering resilience, wellness, and self-care in self and others; and,  
  • Design innovative clinical learning experiences where students can practice leadership skills and identify learning assessment measures.  
adejoke bolanle ayoola  

Adejoke Bolanle Ayoola, PhD
Dean, School of Health
Professor of Nursing, Calvin University

headshot of Alice Teall   Alice Teall, DNP
The Ohio State University
Associate Clinical Professor
sherry chesak  

Sherry S. Chesak, PhD
Mayo Clinic, Nurse Scientist
Professor, University of Minnesota

Cheryl Woods Giscombe   Cheryl Woods Giscombe, PhD
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Associate Dean, PhD Division & Program
headshot of Kate Gawlik  

Kate Gawlik, DNP
The Ohio State University
Director of Undergraduate Health and Wellness Academic Programming

   

Joan Stanley, PhD, Staff Liaison
Chief Academic Officer
jstanley@aacnnursing.org

teri pipe  

Teri Pipe, PhD
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Richard E. Sinaiko Professor in Health Care Leadership

   

Cassandra Godzik, PhD, Staff Liaison
Director of Nursing Education Initiatives
cgodzik@aacnnursing.org

Deborah Stamps  

Deborah Stamps, EdD
Founder and CEO of Deborah Stamps Consulting, LLC

    Allison Jacobs, Staff Liaison
Associate Director of Special Projects
ajacobs@aacnnursing.org
         

Bridget Bingle, Staff Liaison
Nursing Education Coordinator
bbingle@aacnnursing.org

Contributions to the advisory group’s work were also made by Michael Ackerman, DNS, Professor of Clinical Nursing, Director of Master of Healthcare Innovation Program, The Ohio State University; Janie Heath, PhD, former Dean and emerita Professor of Nursing, University of Kentucky; and Allison P. Squires, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, Florence S. Downs PhD Program in Nursing Research and Theory Development, New York University.

Developing the Tool Kit

Working in pairs, the Advisory Work Group developed and identified resources in four areas:  Well-Being, Resilience, Self-Care, and Leadership. The teams:

  • Identified the competencies and sub-competencies in the Essentials related to the four concepts. While these competencies span almost all domains, the majority are aligned with the competencies in Domain 10, Personal, Professional, and Leadership Development.
  • Curated resources (existing and new) that will help faculty to integrate these concepts into their nursing programs.
  • Emphasized entry-level sub-competencies that appear to be most closely aligned with the four concepts.
  • Developed recommendations on how faculty might implement these resources into didactic and clinical learning experiences. 

Pilot School Selection

In Fall 2022, AACN issued a call for pilot schools to all AACN member schools to identify programs interested in implementing and evaluating the impact of the grant’s newly identified learning and assessment strategies. AACN announced that it was seeking 10 schools with entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs to participate in this pilot with $10,000 in funding available to each school to assist with implementation efforts. Expectations were that each school would implement and evaluate learning strategies and clinical experiences developed through this project in their curriculum. AACN received a strong response to this call with 122 applications received from interested schools. Using a rubric developed by AACN and a blind review process, the advisory group selected ten schools to serve as pilot sites. Selection criteria included diversity of faculty, student body, school size, type of school, geographical region, and established practice partnerships.