Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare (SBNH): Advancing Science, Education, Practice and Management Worldwide

Dear Colleagues,

Advancing health equity and optimizing health for all through holistic, contextualized, and humanized approaches lies at the heart of nursing and healthcare. Yet, the current political and economic environment is placing unprecedented pressures on health systems and healthcare professionals (HCPs) who sustain them. These challenges can constrain leadership, autonomy, and the capacity of HCPs and organizations to improve population health.

Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare (SBNH) offers an important avenue for responding to these challenges by reconnecting healthcare practice with what matters most: compassionate, holistic, and relational care that centres on human connection, healing, and whole-person well-being. Across diverse countries, cultures, and healthcare systems, SBNH offers a framework for advancing person- and family-centred care while responding to contemporary health and healthcare challenges. SBNH supports the delivery of quality care while empowering individuals, families, communities, and those who provide care to navigate health and social transitions throughout life.

SBNH is both a philosophy and a value-driven approach that can guide HCPs, leaders, educators, and health organizations. At its core, the strengths-based approach involves recognizing, mobilizing, developing, and building on the strengths of individuals, families, communities, and healthcare professionals to promote health and facilitate healing. SBNH restores the centrality of relational care and draws attention to human capacities that are often underrecognized or underutilized in response to the challenges of health, illness, and life transitions. SBNH embraces a partnership-oriented perspective that fosters growth, strengthens capacities, and supports healing and well-being.

We are pleased to invite you to submit original theoretical and empirical papers examining the adoption, integration, implementation, evaluation, and impact of SBNH across the domains of nursing and healthcare, including care, education, administration, leadership, and research. We particularly welcome contributions that highlight innovations emerging from the SBNH philosophy and value-driven approach, as well as knowledge synthesis, qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods studies addressing the development, validation, and testing of SBNH-related instruments and interventions.

Potential areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Implementation of SBNH approaches and lessons learned in direct care across diverse settings;
• SBNH-informed leadership and organizational innovations;
• Knowledge development and theoretical advancement in SBNH;
• SBNH pedagogy, education, and clinical supervision;
• Development, validation, and evaluation of SBNH instruments and interventions;
• SBNH-informed innovations in nursing and healthcare practice;
• Evaluation of the outcomes and impact of SBNH for individuals, families, communities, professionals, and health systems.

We welcome any paper that deals with one or more of the listed SBNH concepts. We look forward to receiving your contributions and to advancing the knowledge, practice, education, leadership, and innovation needed to humanize healthcare and strengthen health equity through Strengths-Based Nursing and Healthcare.

Prof. Dr. Judith Lapierre
Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Bernardino
Prof. Dr. Céline Gélinas
Guest Editors

Dr. Paula C. Encarnação
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.