Financial and operational skills for nurse managers

The nurse manager role has changed from managing one inpatient unit to responsibility for multiple units, more employees, larger operating budgets, and clinical services outside the traditional nursing inpatient setting. The increasing complexity of the role requires the manager to function at a higher level of financial and operational performance. The article describes a leadership development project that utilized "partnerships" to coach managers in financial and operational management skills. It describes the analytic tools used to evaluate unit performance and shows how the utilization of these tools provides managers with the data they need to develop appropriate solutions to problems on their units.