2025 Annual Conference

Share best practices and leadership strategies on navigating the current healthcare landscape from an operational, structural, political, and/or financial perspective. Consider how your experience fits—these examples show the theme in action across settings:

• Academia: Collaborations between Schools of Nursing and health systems to co-design DNP projects aligned with strategic goals, navigating competing expectations across multiple organizations.
• Acute Care: Leading through matrix reporting structures and unionized environments while managing financial constraints and staffing challenges.
• Ambulatory: Developing RN-led triage models and navigating transitions of care within complex patient environments, especially where interdisciplinary collaboration is essential.

Highlight culture-changing approaches that move beyond awareness to measurable prevention, intervention, and support for nurses and nurse leaders.

Examples may include the following:Addressing incivility, bullying, and workplace violence, in a specific setting; Overcoming toxic leadership environments; Successful strategies to expand best practices and strategies to the ambulatory environment; Addressing microaggressions amongst nurse leaders, interprofessional colleagues, and the patients and families nurses serve. Consider how your experience fits—these examples show the theme in action across settings:

• Academia: Strategies for integrating workplace violence prevention into nursing curricula and addressing incivility toward students in clinical placements.
• Acute Care: Partnerships between nurse leaders and security to proactively identify patients with a history of violence and implement outcome-driven mitigation strategies.
• Ambulatory: Creating clear definitions of workplace violence, including microaggressions, and building collaborative relationships with community partners to improve safety.

From frontline to executive, we seek stories of nursing leadership development, succession planning, mentorship, and strategies for leading in an era of ambiguity and transformation.

Examples may include the following: Outcomes of executive leaders in CEO and COO roles; Research and elevation of nursing leadership science; Innovations in graduate-level curriculum/preparation for nurse leaders; Advanced Practice Provider leadership and organizational structures; Leading through an organizational restructure.

• Academia: Integrating AI and simulation into curricula and developing academic-practice partnerships to evaluate the impact of emerging technologies on clinical outcomes.
• Acute Care: Leading technology implementation to reduce documentation burden, manage downtime procedures, and evaluate the effectiveness of virtual nursing models.
• Ambulatory: Strategically adopting AI to improve efficiency in outpatient workflows, while demonstrating cost-effectiveness and ethical use in care navigation.

• Academia: Addressing faculty recruitment, placement bottlenecks, and innovative ways to integrate nontraditional students into the profession.
• Acute Care: Advancing staffing models that incorporate predictive analytics and technology, while promoting well-being, diversity, and leadership longevity.
• Ambulatory: Tackling scope clarity among RNs, MAs, and APRNs, and building cultures of acceptance and innovation through strategic partnerships with physicians and interdisciplinary teams.