Developing BSN leaders for the future: the Fuld Leadership Initiative for Nursing Education (LINE)

The Helene Fuld Leadership Initiative in Nursing Education (LINE) program w as designed to enhance beginning leadership competencies of baccalaureate n ursing students. Given the increasing need for strong and effective leaders hip throughout the health care system, and the demands new graduates encoun ter as they move into practice, the LINE program is built on the premise th at leadership skills must be instilled at the undergraduate level. The prog ram achieves its goal through an intensive 5-day institute focused on asses sing and developing the leadership competencies of nurse educators and thei r clinical partners to enable them to be effective agents of curriculum cha nge in their home institutions. The institute also assists participants to redesign their baccalaureate nursing (BSN) curricula to ensure that student s learn to: (1) work effectively within and across complex, integrated orga nizational and institutional boundaries; (2) think and act from the perspec tive of a system; and (3) communicate, negotiate, lead, and facilitate chan ge within health care organizations. D. Goleman's (1998) framework of emoti onal intelligence, which addresses both personal competence (managing onese lf) and social competence (handling one's relationships with others) provid es the framework for operationalizing leadership in the BSN curriculum. To date, 26 BSN programs and their clinical partners have participated in the LINE program, which has the potential to influence the beginning leadership development of more than 2,400 BSN students. Program outcomes reveal that education-practice collaboration, professional networking, individual leade rship development of nurse educators and their clinical partners as change agents, and the integration of leadership experiences at all levels of the BSN curriculum are important in developing beginning leadership competencie s in BSN students. (C) 2001 by W.B. Saunders Company.