Nursing leadership and health policy: everybody's business

We all know great leadership when we see it. Outstanding nurse leaders, guided by a moral compass, simultaneously see the big picture and the consequences at micro level. While policy and politics determine health and nursing practice, most nurses just want to get on with their day job. They carry out decisions made by others but have little say in them, and weak influence or status, although they are increasingly knowledgeable and skilled. In settings where policy decisions are made - parliaments, governments, and boardrooms - nurse leaders are often neither heard nor heeded. This is starting to change. The global Nursing Now campaign is working with the International Council of Nurses, and the World Health Organization, to create and strengthen strategic nursing leadership, as modelled by the International Council of Nurses' Global Nursing Leadership Institute. A new window of opportunity is opening, with the bicentennial of Florence Nightingale's birth in 2020. Now is the moment!