Nightingale Challenge

The AMSN Nightingale Challenge 2020-2021 Helps Emerging Professionals Build Leadership Skills

One of the newest initiatives we have undertaken is the Nightingale Challenge, brought to the nursing community through Nursing Now. 2020 is the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. To celebrate, the World Health Organization declared 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife. In celebration of the first-ever global celebration of nursing, Nursing Now launched the Nightingale Challenge, an initiative to provide leadership opportunities for clinical nurses.

This initiative includes the active participation of AMSN members who are under 35 years of age, who were selected from an online survey application. The initiative is led by a leading international authority on leadership, Dr. Terry Jones, RN, PhD.

Over the course of the program, participants wireview and discuss the use of behaviors that promote effective leadership and followership, exploring topics such as the Courage to Serve, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Enabling Others to Act, and Encouraging the Heart.

Program Faculty

Terry L. Jones, RN, PhD

Terry L. Jones, RN, PhD is a tenured Assistant Professor of Nursing at Virginia Commonwealth University. She serves as the Concentration Lead for the Nursing Leadership and Organization Science concentration and teaches graduate courses focusing on various aspects of leadership, management, evidence-based practice and health services research. She has been a nurse for over 35 years and has served in a variety of roles ranging from critical care staff nurse to Chief Nurse Executive in a large academic medical center. Dr. Jones completed her PhD in 2004 at The University of Texas at Austin and was selected to participate in the NIH-Sponsored Clinical Scholars Program at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas from 2007-2010. She has been recognized as one of the Great 100 Nurses in Dallas-Ft. Worth and an Outstanding Graduate in her doctoral and undergraduate programs. Dr. Jones’ program of research focuses on improving the nursing work environment and the quality and safety of nursing care in acute care hospitals. She is currently exploring relationships among nursing work time quality and patient outcomes. Dr. Jones is the principal investigator for the Clinical Leadership Development Program study funded by AMSN and serves as the lead faculty for AMSN’s Nightingale Challenge initiative.

Program Description

The course is designed to examine leader-follower partnerships in diverse healthcare settings. Theories, research findings, and expert opinions from several fields of study are used to explore the related concepts of power, authority, influence, leadership, followership, structural empowerment, emotional intelligence, and professional advocacy in the context of complex healthcare work environments.

Special emphasis is placed on the use of effective leadership and followership behaviors to sustain high performing healthcare teams and improve quality outcomes for patients, families, and healthcare organizations.

This course also provides an overview of basic performance improvement skills to facilitate the leadership practice of challenging the process.

Throughout the program the members are guided in the planning of their own leadership and career development by Dr. Jones, members of the cohort and their work at their facility. The group actively networks with members through discussion boards, engaging on timely topics such as finding your one's voice and how to challenge processes in ways that will increase your chance of success.

The Nightingale Challenge is currently assisting a team of emerging nurse professionals in facing and breaking down the barriers that hold nurses back. 

Members completing the program will also have opportunities to continue to develop their leadership roles as members or chairs of volunteer units within AMSN and within their own practice settings.

We are excited to contribute to the leadership development of our members, we know that clinical nurses are leaders. Every day they lead clinical teams and an interdisciplinary team to achieve patient care goals. We are proud to participate in the Nightingale Challenge to further the leadership skills of our members to further contribute to their professional and personal development.

AMSN hopes to make this content an enduring program at the completion of the Nightingale Challenge.