How to Develop Inclusive, Sustainable Leadership in Nursing? Clean the Sticky Floor!

Females from ethnic minority backgrounds are currently under-represented in nurse leadership positions across Western healthcare systems. Despite being over-represented at entry-level nursing roles, they are under-represented in all nursing roles above that. Inclusivity in nurse leadership is crucial to the sustainability of healthcare systems, not least because it improves decision-making in the delivery of healthcare services. Previous attempts to address issues of inclusivity in nurse leadership have relied on establishing new Leadership Development Programs (LDPs) which target under-represented groups. Problematically, LDPs do little to address the organizational contexts in which potential leaders operate and perpetuate widely held social understandings about who is a ‘leader’. This means LDPs alone cannot redress inequalities in nurse leadership. This chapter moves the focus away from LDPs, which attempt to ‘fix the person’, and instead focuses on characteristics of organizational contexts which facilitate or undermine more inclusive forms of nurse leadership