By: Harriet Foreman, RN, EdD

Too often, both nurses and patients witness major breakdowns in the health care system--ineffective communication, unrealistic nurse-patient ratios, tension among staff, abuse of authority, and most importantly, managers drawn away from patients due to administrative duties. Nursing Leadership for Patient-Centered Care presents engaging, real-life stories of nurses, managers, and leaders who have experienced failures of the system firsthand, and have been motivated to critically examine, address, and resolve them.

This collection of narratives includes practical methods, models, and strategies that nurses can apply to enhance and expand their own practices. Readers will gain a wealth of insight on how to overcome narrow-mindedness and egocentrism, to improve their management, leadership, communication, and organizational skills, and ultimately to bring real reform to health care practices and patient care.

• Presents stories of actual management issues and how nurse leaders/managers, nursing staff, and patients have handled them
• Identifies harmful trends in the health care system that can be analyzed and remedied
• Encourages nurse managers to shift the prevailing "system-centered" orientation to one that is "patient-centered"
• Provides a phenomenologically based leadership/management model for resolving nursing issues institutionally and individually
• Includes methods for addressing cultural and religious barriers among staff

An engaging, enjoyable read, Nursing Leadership for Patient-Centered Care will empower readers to learn from these narratives and to dramatically transform the health care system at large.

Review:

Deborah M. Tascone, MS, RN: "Dr. Forman's book is revolutionary and courageous in that it brings to light negative issues that exist in nursing management and patient care. Her use of plain, day-to-day language and methods will ultimately bring reform to health care at the bedside."

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: Reforming Patient Care From the Bedside, Deborah M. Tascone, MS, RN
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Prologue: Listening With the Third Ear: Or- The Philosophical Underpinnings of This Book
  Patricia Munhall, EdD, ARNP, PsyA, FAAN
• Chapter 1: The Three Cs: Collaboration, Communication, and Cooperation
• Chapter 2: The Organization: Shifting Authority and Communication From Top Down to Patient Centered
• Chapter 3: Leadership/Management-Can You Tell Them Apart?
• Chapter 4: Labor and Management: Need Not Be Adversarial
• Chapter 5: Personality Traits-The Keys to the Kingdom
• Chapter 6: Bridging the Cultural Divide
• Chapter 7: Spirituality and Nursing: Challenges, Dilemmas, and Occasional Successes, Barbara Stevens Barnum, RN, PhD, FAAN
• Chapter 8: Grief: Part of the Human Condition
• Chapter 9: Ethics, Morality, Critical Thinking, and Use and Abuse of Power: Are There Missing Links?
• Chapter 10: The Epilogue-Nursing: What It Is and What It Should Be
• Bibliography
• Index