Issues in mental health nursing
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Issues Ment Health Nurs · May 2015
Distilling the Antecedents and Enabling Dynamics of Leader Moral Courage: A Framework to Guide Action.
Intelligent, robust and courageous nursing leadership is essential in all areas of nursing, including mental health. However, in the nursing leadership literature, the theoretical discourse regarding how leaders recognise the need for action and make the choice to act with moral purpose is currently limited. Little has been written about the cognitions, capabilities and contextual factors that enable leader courage. ⋯ From the analysis, we distilled a multi-level framework that identifies a range of individual characteristics and capabilities, and enabling contextual factors that underpin leader moral courage. The framework suggests leader moral courage is more complex than often posited in theories of leadership, as it comprises elements that shape moral thought and conduct. Given the complexity and challenges of nursing work, the framework for moral action derived from our analysis provides insight and suggestions for strengthening individual and group capacity to assist nurse leaders and mental health nurses to act with integrity and courage.