Having strong nurse leadership skills involves your innate personality and behavior, as well as continued professional development. Leadership also involves being vulnerable in identifying gap areas for needed growth and then seeking out opportunities to fill in those gaps. The 2025 SDAHO Nurse Leadership program has 22 participants who have completed 5 of the 10 sessions so far.
These sessions included:
- Session 1 – Crucial Conversations
- Session 2
- South Dakota Board of Nursing and Center for Nursing Workforce
- Review of American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL) Nurse Leader Core Competencies
- Session 3 – Nursing Inquiry
- nursing research,
- evidenced based practice,
- quality assurance & performance improvement
- Session 4 – Recap of the 2025 Legislative Session
- Session 5 – Post-Acute Partners in Care Conference
One valuable concept a SDAHO Nurse Leadership participant shared from our crucial conversation session was, “(I appreciated) learning to recognize the stories and truths within hard conversations”.
More valuable concepts shared throughout the various sessions include “how to start this type of (crucial) conversation”, “learning about CPR = content, pattern, and relationship and ways to help focus on what I really want and learning to share my good intent”, “learning about AONL (American Organization for Nursing Leadership) as an organization and their (nursing leadership) core competencies”, “learning about the SDBON”, “the importance of knowing what the best practice is as a leader”, “how much change truly comes from research and scientific approach”, “learning about the legislation process…and how much advocacy does help our health care in the state”.
No matter where you are in your nursing career, continuing your professional growth is part of being a nurse. The American Nurses Association (ANA) standard 13, Education, states “the registered nurse seeks knowledge and competence that reflects current nursing practice and promotes futuristic thinking”. SDAHO encourages all nurses to continually seek opportunities to grow and invest in themselves. The SDAHO Nurse Leadership participants are fully committed to this process of critical thinking, self-reflection, and inquiry for personal growth.
As Florence Nightingale said, “let us never consider ourselves finished nurses…we must be learning all of our lives”.
