The Experience of a Staff Registered Nurse Transitioning to a Nurse Manage

Duties performed by staff Registered Nurses (RNs), and Nurse Managers (NMs) require a different skill set to be effective. Nursing leadership is responsible for guiding staff RNs in providing quality, effective, and cost-efficient care. Incompetent leadership may lead to decreased retention and negative patient outcomes. Quality nursing leadership positively influences professional development of staff RNs and patient care. A literature review exposed a gap in leadership training that assists new NMs to function independently and efficiently. The purpose of this original basic qualitative study, which employed Husserl and Heidegger's approach of phenomenology, was to explore the experiences of staff RNs who transitioned into the NM role within the last five years and practice in either a small rural hospital or large urban medical center in southeastern North Carolina. Semi-structured interviews using open-ended questions were utilized to collect rich, contextual data until data saturation occurred. Open and axial coding of the data, documented in a code/theme frequency table, facilitated the discovery of central themes within the data including: the benefit of having performed managerial duties while in a staff RN role; leadership training to introduced a broader view of NM responsibilities and techniques needed to accomplish these duties; and a dedicated mentor who provided intimate guidance during the transition. The evidence from this study aligns with the published literature regarding the transition from a staff RN role into a NM role and supports making a proposal to the hospital's administration for a systems-oriented NM training opportunity such as a 90-day nursing leadership orientation that included formal classes on budgeting, common human resource management issues, and how to evaluate staff. This formalized training, in concert with one-on-one mentoring with experienced NM, would ensure a smoother transition from the staff RN role into the NM role and would produce more efficient, more satisfied nursing leadership professionals who are more inclined to stay with the organization that helped their career growth.