Map of organisations
Click on a country on the map below to see specific organisations that have accepted the Nightingale Challenge.
Nightingale Challenge case studies
Please see below some case studies of how other organizations are planning to respond to the Nightingale Challenge.
The proud custodians of Florence Nightingale’s legacy at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London have a long history of developing exceptional leadership among their nurses and midwives. The Nightingale Academy was launched at the Trust in 2017 to provide a platform for innovation, practice and people development in nursing and midwifery develop the next generation of ‘nightingales’.
In 2017 the Trust launched the Nightingale Nurse Award, a professional award for its most outstanding nurses and midwives. To receive the award individuals have to be nominated by their peers and managers, show evidence of their outstanding patient care and submit some academic reflections. On completion of the training nurses receive a bespoke badge and have the honour of being known as a ‘Nightingale Nurse’.
In 2018 the Nightingale Academy Leadership Programme was launched. The programme is designed to support and develop nursing and midwifery leaders to cope with the daily challenges they face and develop a culture of compassion and outstanding patient care. The programme, which was co-designed with future nurse leaders, is six months long and involves cohorts of around 25 nurses undertaking classroom based learning and action learning sets. The participants were further supported by networks of mentors aligned to specific areas, such as management, research, education or specialist clinical practice.
For the Nightingale Challenge in 2020, the Trust plans to continue these programmes and go further still. They are currently crowdsourcing ideas from their staff and senior leaders, plans already include, a leadership programme for specialist nurses and midwives and practice development nurses, writing for publication training and a conference. The Trust also provides bespoke leadership opportunities and a development programme for nurse leaders in several other countries and they hope to add more partner institutions during 2020.
Albert Einstein Jewish Hospital is considered one of the finest hospitals in all Latin America. In May 2019, a senior group from the hospital’s Operations, Nursing and Human Resource Boards evaluated 165 nursing and midwifery professionals from across the organization. Twenty were selected to take part in the Nightingale Challenge and a meeting was organized with these staff to discuss the programmes that would be organized for them in 2020.
The Training and Development Programme will be focussed on developing three key competencies in the group: Systemic Reasoning; Care and Personal; and Interpersonal Efficiency. The training course is expected to take place over 11 months throughout 2020, with around 160 hours of training in total, and certification at the end. The precise content is now being developed by two of the twenty selected nurses working alongside, the institution’s Board of Directors, Board of Teachers, Training and Development team and Human Resources Department.
Claudia Regina Laselva, Chief Nursing Officer for the hospital, said “The twenty nurses we have selected are radiant young professionals from across our organization. I believe the Nightingale Challenge will be an excellent development opportunity for them, as well as a chance for us to show recognition of their skills and potential. The initiative has generated a lot of engagement from staff already and will, I believe, be a great way to give a very positive attention to nursing and midwifery in 2020. We are already thinking about the next twenty that we could identify and involve!”
Mulago hospital is the largest hospital in Uganda, and the primary public referral and teaching hospital for the country. Their plans for the Nightingale Challenge involve multiple cohorts of twenty young nurses aged 35 or below, who are being channelled into one of three development programmes throughout 2020. The first twenty will be put through a leadership and management training initiative, which is still under development. The second group will be trained in Applied Research and then commissioned to conduct research projects on improving nursing services and patient care in the hospital. The third cohort will be sent for further training at diploma and degree level to improve a variety of skills selected by them to suit their future career ambitions. The hospital is currently part way through the selection process for these nurse cohorts and looks forward to updating the Nightingale Challenge global community as their plans progress.
Queensland, Australia has accepted the Nightingale Challenge 2020! At least 20 nurses and midwives from across our vast state will participate in a six-month integrated leadership and management program known as Manage4Improvement or M4I.
This highly interactive program will build the confidence and capabilities of nurses and midwives to support improvements to health service delivery. It focuses on the development of the management and leadership skills nurses and midwives require to create and support a culture of innovation, improvement and enhanced patient outcomes.
A variety of experiential learning activities will be utilised including face to face workshops, a profiling assessment tool, the development and implementation of a robust improvement project, and collaborative peer triangles. Across the six months participants will explore themes such as leading and managing change, quality and service improvement, evaluating health service delivery, finance and budget management, stakeholder engagement, and political astuteness.
The Queensland M4I Nightingale Challenge program will be facilitated by a mix of highly experienced internal and external facilitators who are industry experts in leadership, management and improvement science. There will also be the opportunity for senior nursing and midwifery leaders to nominate as mentors to support the Nightingale Challenge participants in their journey.
2018 marked 150 year anniversary of professional nursing in Australia. In 1868, Lucy Osburn and five other Nightingale-trained nurses arrived at Sydney Hospital, where the first school of nursing education was established. South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (SESLHD) covers a geographical area of 468km and has nine facilities located across the district. There are over 5,000 nurses and midwives employed across these facilities. SESLHD has a strong commitment to develop nursing and midwifery leaders of the future and has a broad suite of leadership programs that will be offered to participants of the Nightingale Challenge in 2020. The programs aim to meet the needs of the participants own personal and leadership development, and the wider organisation. The programs range from short one or two day leadership development workshops to more long term programs that have an academic structure. A sample of some of the programs on offer are:-
Effective Leadership Program: 12 month program with academic structure
Clinical Leadership Program: 12 month program with academic structure
Future Nurse Unit Manager Program: 12 month program with mentoring and shadowing
Institute of Health Care Improvement: 2 on line learning modules
Emerging Leaders Program: One day workshop
Heart of Caring Leadership Teams: One day workshop with follow–up coaching
SESLHD is in the planning phase and preparations have commenced to develop strategies to promote the challenge to nurses and midwives throughout the organisation. The challenge will be promoted at upcoming events in readiness for recruitment of participants and the launch in January 2020.
The Specialty Hospital is one of the leading private hospitals in the MENA region, located in Amman Jordan. The hospital employs around 1,000 qualified employees including some 400 nurses and midwives who are dedicated to providing quality care to Jordanian and international patients.
The Specialty Hospital is proud to be among the first adopters of the Nightingale Challenge, drawing on its role as a teaching hospital with a commitment to investing in and developing human capital.
Specialty Hospital has selected 20 young nurses and midwives, one from each department, to participate in the programme set for it. The adaptive training programme will work on improving and developing the leadership skills of these nurses. The programme will run for four months during 2020, twice a week, over three hours for each session. The program will include:
- lectures and group discussions
- quality improvement projects for groups of 4-5 participants
- an individual development plan for each participant
- hosting a visit from role model from the nursing sector
- mentoring for each participant by senior nursing managers
We look forward to empowering these 20 young nurses , as we believe that nurses play an important role for they spend most of their time in direct contact with patients and by developing them and giving them leadership skills this will have a positive impact on both staff and patient satisfaction.
