The Nurse Executive: Developing Nurse Leaders Who Lead With Evidence
Sustainable innovation requires nurse managers and directors who can translate high-quality evidence into real-world practice.
If you work in or alongside nursing leadership, you’ve likely heard the refrain that conducting evidence-based practice (EBP) correctly is “too time consuming” or “too academic.“ In response, many leaders gravitate toward quality improvement methodologies— rapid tests of change that can be implemented quickly and do not require skills in finding, appraising, and synthesizing evidence.
Unfortunately, avoiding the work required for a true appraisal of the evidence can result in wasted time, unnecessary costs, and avoidable patient harm. In today’s complex care environment, EBP competence is a core leadership requirement, not an academic exercise. Nurse leaders must be able to critically evaluate evidence and guide teams toward interventions that reliably improve patient outcomes.
Nurse managers and directors are uniquely positioned to lead the way in EBP. Here’s why:
Nurse leaders set the clinical and operational tone of healthcare systems. Assistant nurse managers, nurse managers, and nurse directors influence which practices are adopted, sustained, or retired—and thus, whether patient care reflects the best available evidence.
Nurse Leader EBP Competence Matters
Nurse leaders operate at the intersection of quality, safety, workforce engagement and patient outcomes. Their decisions directly shape care delivery and organizational performance. When leaders lack EBP competence, healthcare systems face real risk:
Ineffective or unsafe practices being inadvertently approved
Evidence-based initiatives that potentially rely on weak or misinterpreted studies
Confusion between research, EBP and quality improvement conflating improvement work
Teams missing opportunities to improve empirical outcomes
Vulnerabilities in execution of tactics to achieve patient safety, regulatory and Magnet standards
“When evidence is weak or misunderstood, even well-intended initiatives can cause harm.”
Persistant Gaps in Nurse Leader EBP Competency
Despite widespread endorsement of EBP competency by national agencies including the AONL and AACN, many nurse leaders enter their roles without adequate preparation to apply it in practice. Some of the common reasons include the following:
Graduate education often emphasizes research over translating evidence into practice
Individual EBP competence is rarely assessed individually (in favor of group initiatives)
Leadership development tends to focus on operations and compliance, without considering appraisal and translation of relevant evidence to best inform these decisions
The result? A leadership workforce that is accountable for evidence-based outcomes that may lack the preparation to deliver them.
The Nurse Executive Imperative
EBP competence is not optional—it is a foundational leadership skill set to achieve lasting impacts in quality, safety, and health outcomes. Organizations that invest in EBP-competent nurse leaders are better positioned to reduce practice variation, strengthen professional practice environments, and meet both regulatory and Magnet expectations.
Leadership without evidence places patients, staff, and organizations at risk. With the right strategy and support, nurse leaders can lead confidently—ensuring that care decisions are driven by evidence, not habit.
Give Leaders the Right Tools to Deliver Sustained Outcomes
We help nurse executives and organizations:
Assess nurse leader EBP competence using validated measures
Design role-specific EBP education for assistant managers, managers and directors
Clarify distinctions between research, EBP and quality improvement
Coach leaders to apply EBP to operational and clinical challenges
Strengthen Magnet readiness through rigorous, transparent EBP processes
Build internal EBP capacity that is efficient, scalable, and sustainable
Interested in Helping your Nurse Leaders Produce Sustainable Outcomes?
We build evidence-literate nurse leaders who can deliver outcomes that last. We partner with nurse executives and healthcare systems to embed EBP into leadership practice and organizational infrastructure. We focus on developing leaders who can confidently apply evidence to the real operational and clinical decisions their teams face every day.
Interested in learning more?
American Organization of Nurse Leaders. (2022). Core Competencies. www.aonl.org, www.aonl.org/competencies
Caramanica, L., Gallagher-Ford, L., Idelman, L., Mindrila, D., Richter, S., & Thomas, B. K. (2022). Establishment of Nurse Manager Leadership Competencies to Support Clinicians in Evidence-Based Practice. Journal of Nursing Administration, 52(1), 27–34.
