Presented by: CHNC, Standards & Competencies Standing Committee, CHN Leadership Institute Subcommittee (Ruth Schofield, RN, MSc(T),  Genevieve Currie, RN, MN,  Françoise Filion, RN, MScN)

Leadership plays a pivotal role in the lives of all community health nurses.  It is an essential element for quality professional practice and practice environments. Public Health Nurses use leadership competencies to build capacity in organizations, communities and individuals.  Leadership is a shared responsibility – community health nurses in all domains of practice and at all levels must maximize their leadership potential.  Changing practice environments over the past few years have made acquiring leadership skills and influencing change with these skills more challenging.

Public health nurses face issues of growing social inequities and concern about the determinants of health on a daily basis. Leadership competencies are required to address these issues. In an interactive workshop, leadership competencies will be shared and linked to key strategies and tools addressing public health nursing practice issues. Strategies and tools will be introduced to assist participants to build on their leadership capacity and skills to advance frontline nursing practice, education and administration. A mentorship model will be initiated during the workshop for uptake after the workshop in a virtual format. The LEADS framework for leadership development and learning needs will be discussed.

Join us to explore these strategies and together, we can find some answers!

Participant Outcomes:

1. Become aware of leadership development needs for PHNs
2. Reflect on personal learning needs for leadership development
3. Learn about the LEADS framework within leadership development
4. Identify practice examples involving leadership and health equity
5. Increase knowledge of virtual mentorship models
6. Introduce and initiate a mentorship model for sustaining leadership