Toxic Nursing

Today's nurse managers--tasked with a wide array of responsibilities from staffing and budgeting to promoting safe and effective patient care--face unprecedented demands in their role as leaders of the largest healthcare workforce in the industry. They must be clinically competent, relationally savvy, and administratively gifted--and find the time to create and sustain a healthy work environment. In addition to those demands, the lopsided aging of the population has had a double impact: More nurses are retiring from the profession at the same time as elderly baby boomers require increasingly complex and costly care. As nursing workforce retirements increase, a continued push for effective leadership will be critical to healthcare outcomes in the coming decades. As workforce shortages continue, it will be critical to educate managers who can advocate for, support, and empower staff. Healthcare organizations have a duty to provide nurse managers with the tools and support needed to