The Role of Effective Nurse Leadership in Advancing Nursing

Dear Colleagues,

Effective nurse leadership is essential for advancing nursing practice, improving patient outcomes, enabling effective nurse education opportunities and strengthening healthcare systems. In increasingly complex clinical environments, nurse leaders play a crucial role in promoting innovation in models of care, quality and evidence-based practice, supporting nurse education and professional development, fostering interprofessional collaboration, and guiding teams through organizational change. Leadership is also critical to clinical excellence through the implementation of evidence-based practice and innovative quality improvement initiatives. In essence, leadership in nursing is central to staff well-being, including mental health promotion and psychological well-being among nursing staff, retention, patient safety, quality of care across efficient health and social care systems, impactful education and development opportunities, environmental stewardship, and innovation in service delivery.

This Special Issue welcomes manuscripts that explore the role of nurse leadership in advancing nursing across clinical, educational, managerial, and policy settings, including global health challenges and crisis leadership such as disaster management and pandemic preparedness. 

We are particularly interested in research addressing leadership models and well-established conceptual frameworks, including transformational, authentic, servant, ethical, situational and contingency, and complexity leadership theories, which authors may use to guide their manuscripts. 

Authors are encouraged to ground their manuscripts in well-established conceptual frameworks and leadership theories relevant to nursing and healthcare. These may include, but are not limited to, Transformational Leadership Theory, Authentic Leadership Theory, Servant Leadership, Situational Leadership, Complexity Leadership Theory, Leader–Member Exchange Theory, Shared Governance models, and other established frameworks that support the analysis of leadership behaviors, organizational outcomes, workforce engagement, quality of care, and professional development.

Additional areas of interest include workforce empowerment, decision-making, evidence-based practice, innovative quality improvement projects, digital transformation, sustainability, green practice, staff mental health and psychological well-being, and educational and developmental strategies to prepare future nurse leaders. 

Clinical Excellence: We particularly welcome manuscripts examining how effective nurse leadership supports clinical excellence through evidence-based practice, the implementation and sustainability of best available evidence, and innovative quality improvement initiatives aimed at enhancing patient safety, care quality, clinical outcomes, and service delivery.

Staff Well-being: We also encourage contributions exploring the role of nurse leadership in promoting staff well-being, with particular attention to mental health promotion, psychological well-being, resilience, supportive work environments, burnout prevention, workforce engagement, and strategies that foster the retention and professional sustainability of nursing staff.

Original research articles, reviews, case studies, and theoretical papers are invited to contribute to a deeper understanding of how effective leadership can shape the future of nursing.

Dr. Lucia Filomeno
Dr. Maria Cassar
Guest Editors

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. Nursing Reports is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1800 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.