Welcome back to Leading Nursing Together, the podcast where we explore strategies, challenges, and inspiration for today's nursing leaders. I'm Michelle Hoen, your host, and today's episode is all about something foundational, professional practice, and how we as leaders can cultivate support and elevate it across our nursing teams. Professional practice isn't just the framework or something that magnet requires us to do. It is the heart beat of nursing excellence, and it lives in every decision. Our action and innovation that we support. We need to make sure that we have nursing professional practice embedded within every piece of nursing that we do. Let's dive in to what that really means to lead professional practice and how we can foster a culture of excellence, accountability, and growth in every corner of our organization. Professional practice. Is the systematic approach to nursing excellence anchored in standards, ethics, evidence, and shared leadership. It includes how it is delivered, how nurses grow professionally, and how teams engage in continuous improvement. But here's the key. Professional practice thrives when it is intentionally led as nurse executives, directors, and leaders. Our role is to embed that professional practice into the fabric of our culture. That means supporting autonomy, accountability, and advancement, while ensuring alignment with organizational goals and patient outcomes. So how do we begin and what do we need to do to ensure that we are constantly embedding that professional practice within our settings? It starts with building and sustaining that professional practice model. If you're a leader and you already do not have a professional practice model within your organization, you need. To define that a well-defined professional practice model should reflect your organization's mission, nursing values, and care philosophy. It should be visible, actionable, and aligned with frontline practice. Leaders must champion the model incorporate into their orientation evaluations. And recognize programs and ensure it is more than just a poster on the wall. This begins normally as a leader with making sure that you are surrounding yourself with other leaders and making sure that you all have the same vision and that vision is reflective of your organization. Lead a culture of shared governance and nurse empowerment. Empowered nurses drive quality of care. Leaders must support a robust shared governance structure. Unit councils, nursing congresses, and practice committees that enables nurses decision making and innovation. Our job is to mentor council leaders, remove those barriers and ensure real follow through on staff recommendations. I know this can be hard, and I know sometimes it can be frustrating, but the more engaged nurses you have, the stronger professional practice you have within your organization. Three is invest in professional development pathways. Excellence grows with opportunities. Support clinical ladders, certification programs, and academic advancement. Align your budgets to include tuition reimbursement, certification, incentives, and dedicate educational resources. Professional growth should be expected, supported and celebrated at every level. Make sure you're trying to encourage. And support your nurses to go to conferences, getting a library for them to do research in with nursing journals. Find a way to allow them to grow. Develop nurse leaders at every level. Leadership isn't just limited to a title. Preceptors charge nurses, council chairs are all leaders. Provide leadership development programs, mentorship and succession planning as CNOs or a CNOs. We must create leadership pipelines that are diverse, sustainable, and driven by professional excellence. Recognize and reward these excellence consistently. Recognition reinforces a culture. One of the best ways I think for nursing is the National Daisy Award, and sometimes that might not be possible. The organization might not support that, but you can do it in other ways. You can help with clinical advancement, annual awards for excellence, giving praise on a daily basis that matters as well. Make sure excellence is visible. Leaders should be present. Engaged and responsive to the nurse's success. Show the wins. Let them know that you see them every single day. Advancing professional practice also means holding ourselves accountable as leaders. Are we aligning our goals with our nursing practice? Are we responding to the frontline feedback? Are we transparent with our data, our outcomes, and our opportunities? All of these are important. They need to know what is driving our practice, but they also need to know what is driving the organization. Use nursing sensitive indicators, engagement surveys, and quality metrics to assess and elevate your professional environment. Collaborate interprofessionally with different teams and remove silos within the organization and promote nursing's full scope of influence. Professional practice excellence is not a static goal. It is a continuous journey. And leadership must intentionally, visibly, and strategically have it on every one of their employees' goals. Let's remember, professional practice is our responsibility to lead, nurture, and grow. It is how we retain great nurses, how we improve patient outcomes, and how we fulfill our mission to deliver compassionate evidence-based care. As nurse leaders. We don't just support professional practice. We shape it. And when we create a culture where nurses thrive, our entire organization thrives. Let's lead nursing together with clarity, courage, and a deep commitment to professional excellence. Thank you for joining me today on leading nursing together. Until next time. Keep inspiring. Keep empowering, and always remember leadership is a practice to action.