Governance education for nurses: Preparing nurses for the future

The complexities of today's health care environment require organizational governing boards to have deeper understanding of health needs, influences, and outcomes with diverse board leadership. Nurses understand the complexities and demands of health care, but few nurses are engaged on boards of directors and many nurses feel unprepared for the governance leadership role. The nurse of the future requires governance knowledge and competencies to influence organizational policies that will improve health care outcomes and advance health promotion. Governance education is a necessary component of preparing the nurse of the future to influence health care transformation. Until nurses can confidently embrace governance leadership as a part of their professional identity, convincing and expecting non-nurse board leaders to appoint nurses to boards will continue to be a challenge. This paper describes a strategy for incorporating governance competencies into nursing curricula across all education levels by leveraging the American Hospital Association Governance Core Competencies (2009) and the Massachusetts Nurse of the Future Core Competencies©-RN (Massachusetts Department of Higher Education Nursing Initiative, 2016).