Perspectives and explanations of successful executive nurse leadership in English NHS Trust Boards
type: CreativeWork
description: Background: Executive Nurses are members of English NHS unitary Trust Boards; they hold a complex role that is pivotal to securing high-quality patient care. Executive nurses can be cited as being responsible when care failings are identified. Despite its stated importance, limited research has examined the role in the last 20 years. This study aimed to understand the perceptions of successful executive nurse leadership from the perspective of chief executive officers, medical directors, and senior leaders from within the health system and of executive nurses themselves to explain the potential forces that might explain why successful leadership may be experienced in the way that it is described. In understanding and explaining successful executive nurse leadership, it is hoped that any recommendations could accelerate implementation into practice. Methods: A critical realist and narrative study design was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with 19 participants. The participants shared their stories of successful executive nurse leadership within the boardroom; the data was analysed using critical realist and narrative thematic analysis. The Oxford Brookes University Research Ethics Committee granted ethical approval. Results: A narrative for each participant group was created. The four narratives were formed into a synthesis that created a meta-narrative describing the experience of successful executive nurse leadership and potential explanations of why it may be experienced that way. Executive nurses’ leadership experience can be characterised as a liminal space that they transition through. The potential explanations that form their experiences may lay in the perceptions held by the board about nurses and nursing, including the way the executive nurse talks about nursing to avoid being perceived as too ‘nursey’; the different perceptions between the credibility and authority between the medical director and the executive nurse held by the board and the in…
abstract: Background: Executive Nurses are members of English NHS unitary Trust Boards; they hold a complex role that is pivotal to securing high-quality patient care. Executive nurses can be cited as being responsible when care failings are identified. Despite its stated importance, limited research has examined the role in the last 20 years. This study aimed to understand the perceptions of successful executive nurse leadership from the perspective of chief executive officers, medical directors, and senior leaders from within the health system and of executive nurses themselves to explain the potential forces that might explain why successful leadership may be experienced in the way that it is described. In understanding and explaining successful executive nurse leadership, it is hoped that any recommendations could accelerate implementation into practice. Methods: A critical realist and narrative study design was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with 19 participants. The participants shared their stories of successful executive nurse leadership within the boardroom; the data was analysed using critical realist and narrative thematic analysis. The Oxford Brookes University Research Ethics Committee granted ethical approval. Results: A narrative for each participant group was created. The four narratives were formed into a synthesis that created a meta-narrative describing the experience of successful executive nurse leadership and potential explanations of why it may be experienced that way. Executive nurses’ leadership experience can be characterised as a liminal space that they transition through. The potential explanations that form their experiences may lay in the perceptions held by the board about nurses and nursing, including the way the executive nurse talks about nursing to avoid being perceived as too ‘nursey’; the different perceptions between the credibility and authority between the medical director and the executive nurse held by the board and the in…
author: Bassett, Sally Bernadette
language: en
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:42:42Z
provider: Oxford Brookes University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Oxford Brookes University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.24384/xv22-8f18