Crisis Leadership During and After the COVID Pandemic: Astute Nurse Leaders Make the Difference

This article explores crisis leadership, with the purpose of offering a series of leadership behaviors and strategies for nurse administrators to limit and reduce the harm of crises, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic, to healthcare professionals. Based on the assumption that generic or universal crisis management approaches are generally ineffective and efficacious crisis management must be tailored to a specific crisis, a study was conducted to identify the most serious COVID-based stressors. The results revealed 5 categories of COVID stressors which are, in ascending order: miscellaneous, administration, patients/patient family issues, inherent aspect of the job (nursing), and personal issues. Personal issues comprised more than half of the greatest COVID-specific stressors. Building on relevant crisis management literature and the identification of COVID-specific stressors, this article provides suggestions and proven tactics for nurse administrators to guide their crisis leadership efforts for the COVID-19 pandemic. The lessons of this article are applicable to other crises.