Sustaining a Focus on Transformative Change.

As I reviewed Bev Simpson’s remarks for this focus on the Dorothy Wylie Health Leaders Institute, I was struck by how similar the current environment is to that which birthed the Institute in 2000. Sixteen years later, we are still trying to achieve transformative change in the healthcare system and leadership still needs our focused attention (Naylor 2016). To complicate the current picture, health human resource data indicate a looming shortage of middle and senior managers, because of projected retirements. And we have no national plan for how we are going to address the potential leadership gap, much of which will be in nursing. Nurses are the largest single healthcare provider group in Canada; they are the only one that consistently crosses healthcare sectors and is present on a 24/7 basis. Thus, nurses are key agents for transformative change or, alternatively, a force for inertia if they are not engaged in the change process.