Developing BSN leaders for the future: the Fuld Leadership Initiative for Nursing Education (LINE)

The Helene Fuld Leadership Initiative in Nursing Education (LINE) program was designed to enhance beginning leadership competencies of baccalaureate nursing students. Given the increasing need for strong and effective leadership throughout the health care system, and the demands new graduates encounter as they move into practice, the LINE program is built on the premise that leadership skills must be instilled at the undergraduate level. The program achieves its goal through an intensive 5-day institute focused on assessing and developing the leadership competencies of nurse educators and their clinical partners to enable them to be effective agents of curriculum change in their home institutions. The institute also assists participants to redesign their baccalaureate nursing (BSN) curricula to ensure that students learn to: (1) work effectively within and across complex, integrated organizational and institutional boundaries; (2) think and act from the perspective of a system; and (3) communicate, negotiate, lead, and facilitate change within health care organizations. D. Goleman's (1998) framework of emotional intelligence, which addresses both personal competence (managing oneself) and social competence (handling one's relationships with others) provides the framework for operationalizing leadership in the BSN curriculum. To date, 26 BSN programs and their clinical partners have participated in the LINE program, which has the potential to influence the beginning leadership development of more than 2,400 BSN students. Program outcomes reveal that education-practice collaboration, professional networking, individual leadership development of nurse educators and their clinical partners as change agents, and the integration of leadership experiences at all levels of the BSN curriculum are important in developing beginning leadership competencies in BSN students.