Clinical leadership is demonstrated by leader behaviours enacted by staff nurses
during the course of their practice within the therapeutic nurse-patient relationship and
between members of the healthcare team. In this study, it is argued that clinical
leadership can be defined as the enactment of Kouzes and Posner's (1995) five leadership
practices by staff nurses in the clinical setting. It is also argued that when nurse managers
enact leadership practices described by Kouzes and Posner's (1995) leadership model,
these actions will more likely result in empowered work environments which promote the
use of clinical leadership behaviours of staff nurses. The links between the Kouzes and
Posner model and the attributes of clinical leadership literature are explicated in the
following section.