Colleges of nursing in South Carolina and elsewhere provide many educational opportunities for people entering the profession. Less prevalent are mid-career programs designed for those who want to develop their leadership skills in nursing and other areas of health care practice.

That’s what makes Carolina’s Amy V. Cockcroft Nursing Leadership Development Program special.

“A number of the fellows who have completed the program have said it provided life-changing directions for them and a positive impact on nursing,” said program director Ruth Seigler, an associate clinical professor of nursing at USC.

As a result of their participation in the program, Seigler said, participants are better able to determine future directions in their professional careers and many of them have moved into very dynamic and exciting nurse leadership roles.

“I like to think that the Cockcroft program has played a part in preparing them to develop in this way,” she said. “Fellows who complete the program are making a positive difference in a very complex and complicated health care system.”

Founded in 1994 with an endowment by Amy V. Cockcroft, dean of the College Nursing from 1957 to 1969, the program (www.sc.edu/nursing/cockcrft.html) consists of five four-day sessions held throughout the year on the USC campus for competitively selected participants. Each of the sessions deals with a major issue confronting leaders.

The nurse fellows, who come mainly from South Carolina, engage in an array of activities that include speakers, workshops, small group discussion, readings, journaling, leadership projects, and evaluations.

“The curriculum is the dynamic that makes the program work,” said Seigler. “We begin with a group of individuals who don’t know each other and don’t have a trusting relationship and put them in situations where they are going to learn a lot, not only about themselves, but also about each other.

“One of the things we tell them is that this is a safe laboratory for them where they can try out new and different behaviors.”

Graduates can expect to become more involved, pro-active, persuasive, confident, and competent in their nursing leadership skills. They’re also better able to determine when to pursue leadership opportunities and are prepared to deal with conflict while being well versed at staying abreast of issues that impact the field.

The current class consists of 15 people, the largest number yet among groups that have varied in size from 10 to the low teens since the first group went through the program in 1996. Seventy-five nurse leaders will have completed the program when the current class graduates in the spring of 2004.

Seigler believes that efforts like the Cockcroft leadership development program are critical to dealing with some of the key issues confronting nursing that ultimately will be solved by nursing leaders. These include a looming shortage of some one million nurses and nagging public misperceptions about the profession that hinder recruiting and a true understanding of the field.

In fact, for individuals who have a strong interest in helping others, nursing provides a wealth of opportunities in which both men and women can find their niche working in a diverse selection of specialties at significantly higher salaries than only a decade ago.

Michael Scott, a nurse practitioner and manager of the NurseFirst Family Health Care Center in Seneca, described his experience in the Cockcroft Nursing Program as “wonderful,” adding, “It gives participants a chance to develop a collegial relationship with each other. And it enables us to see how as professional nurses we can push forward our own vision of what nursing can do for the citizens of South Carolina. It also helps us look at health care in general.”

Perhaps the best part of the program, added Scott, has been the collegial relationship among participants that developed when the group came together.

“That has been particularly meaningful to me,” he said. “It has been especially helpful getting input from nurses who represent various geographical areas within the state and the problems they’re confronting. We’re beginning to share these problems with each other. That casts a wide net on what can be done collectively. You only get that sense when a group of very motivated people comes together.”

As one of their group projects this year, the Cockcroft Fellows produced a vision statement for the future of nursing in the belief, espoused by Burt Nanus, author of Visionary Leadership, that a clear vision of the profession is critical to defining its future.

The statement, “Nurses will transform care giving through holistic and excellent practice for improved health for all,” sounds simple. But Seigler believes it has the potential of becoming a force in nursing comparable to that outlined in Malcolm Baldwin’s The Tipping Point. The statement recently was adopted by the S.C. State Student Nurses Association and will be introduced for approval at the National Student Nurses’ Association meeting next spring.

“Nursing has great diversity in function, practice, and education,” said Seigler. “But if all nurses are together in a vision of who and what we are, it can be very important in making us feel good about what we’re doing and why, and help us be proud of the profession and desirous of promoting it.”

Scott believes the vision statement will help galvanize the nursing community, which is the first step toward addressing its challenges. “We’re having to look at options of what it will take for the nursing community to come together and look at these problems into the future,” he said.

“One of them is to agree on a common vision of what nursing is. That coming together is a critical element for the future of nursing so that we can speak with one voice and have unity.”
12/03