Developing a Toolkit for First-Line Nursing Managers
Health human resources are critical to meeting the health needs of Ontarians. Policy makers and healthcare managers are challenged to ensure that the right number of people, with the right skills, are available at the right time to deliver health services at an affordable cost. Nurses make up the largest group of healthcare providers in Ontario's healthcare system, and evidence of acute nursing shortages in large urban hospitals has been surfacing since 2000 (Baumann et al. 2006). While the nursing community agrees on the important aspects of nursing HR planning, there is little coordination in the application of evidence-based planning to practice (McGillis Hall et al. 2006). One reason for this has been a lack of readily available evidence-based planning tools that support organizations and nursing managers in effective planning, recruitment, integration and retention. As a result, front-line nursing managers are still challenged with effective nursing HR planning.
The NHRBPT is an attempt to bridge the gap between what we know about nursing HR planning and what we can do to improve the planning process and outcomes at the level of first-line nursing managers. Toolkits are collections of versatile, adaptable educational resources that are particularly useful for addressing complex issues. These issues change from one organization to another and require a high degree of local adaptation (Monroe 2000). When used by local champions, toolkits have been found effective in implementing selected best practice guidelines in a variety of healthcare organizations (Dobbins et al. 2005). More than a collection of information, the most useful toolkits have structured interactive content to facilitate users' learning. The decision to develop the NHRBPT resulted from senior nursing leaders recognizing a need to develop an evidence-informed, practice-ready resource for first-line nursing managers, coupled with a targeted dissemination strategy to maximize the resource's adoption.