Compendium 2.0: Leading Through Change
Nurse leaders’ career paths are changing. The 2025 AONL Insight Study reveals that 46% of nearly 3,000 nurse leaders surveyed are considering significant career moves, with 23% intending to leave their roles.
Recognizing the need for timely, practical support, AONL convened the Workforce Compendium 1.0, a collaborative effort pulled together swiftly to help support the immediate post-pandemic needs of nurse leaders across the globe. Contained within were new innovative approaches to tackling complex problems that nurse leaders were confronting daily. In response to our member needs, AONL published the case scenarios and examples while committing to collecting the data and analyzing the results in a future rendition.
The Compendium 2.0 accomplishes our goal and expands on 1.0’s practical examples, sharing how nurse leaders saw results from investments in leadership development, workflow redesign, and partnerships — improving outcomes, engagement and patient experience.
Furthermore, each section provides an expansive blueprint to address this change. It does this through seven interconnected domains — a culture of inquiry; leadership development; recruitment and attraction; retention; a healthy work environment; academic-practice partnerships and total rewards.
Within these pages, you will see roadmaps for how to design benefits and work environments that actually match what nurses need. We offer a template for how nursing schools and hospitals can create formal partnerships, and establish meaningful pathways for students to join and thrive in the practice environment. We also highlight examples of partnerships that then mature to integrate research directly into practice.
The forward-thinking organizations featured in Compendium 2.0 identify and mentor future leaders early, giving them the digital and financial skills they'll need before promotion. This preparation flows into their workload management, creating support roles that free nurse leaders to focus on their teams rather than on administrative tasks.
With so much change afoot, nurses at all levels need to feel safe questioning the status quo. AONL’s Culture of Inquiry Workforce Committee addresses this issue with an original model, helping organizations deliberately create cycles of continuous improvement.
As the profession evolves, so too must the systems that support it. The Compendium 2.0 is a call to action for nurse leaders to shape the future they want to see. Whether you're redesigning your team structure, forging new partnerships or simply seeking to retain the talent you have, these insights are meant to meet you where you are. Nurse leaders are not alone in navigating this moment of change — together, we can build workplaces that sustain, inspire and grow the next generation of nursing leaders.
Thank you to all the nurse leaders who courageously pioneered these strategies. Their bold and forward-thinking approaches are helping reshape our industry and amplify nurses as leaders in health care.
Erik Martin DNP, RN, CENP, FAAN, FAONL
Vice President, CNO, Norton Children’s Hospital
Past President, AONL
Christi Nguyen, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
Vice President, CNO, Ascension Providence Hospital
Region 7 Board of Director, AONL