Future professionals must develop leadership capabilities in order to respond to the needs of a changing society. It is therefore essential that nursing students are presented with the opportunity to acquire and develop this leadership competence during their studies. 

In order to evaluate the acquisition of competences during their university studies, such as decision-making and teamwork, ultimately amounting to leadership in nursing care, the group of researchers at the UIC Barcelona DECIDE Chair adapted the Self-Assessment Leadership Instrument (SALI) questionnaire model to suit the Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing. The result is the first validated instrument in Spanish to evaluate these aspects of students’ development. “There are other tools available for assessing and measuring leadership capabilities but they are either not nursing-specific or not validated, or they are based on a more transactional leadership model”, explains Dr Pilar Fuster, leading author of the study and lecturer on the Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing.

 “At the Department of Nursing, we strongly believe in the importance of teaching our students about nursing leadership from the year one, so that these future professionals are trained in these skills”, explains Dr Albert Gallart, the study’s principal investigator. According to the authors, “the leadership model we believe to be best suited to the profile of future nurses is connective leadership, focused on dimensions such as strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, impact and influence, and teamwork.” 

The article, entitled “Dimensions of leadership in undergraduate nursing students. Validation of a tool” was published recently in Nurse Education Today.