From leadership research to district action: Nurse Disciplinary Leadership in Higher Education: A Scoping Review

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: review-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Background: Leadership of nurse education and research has become increasingly challenging over the last decade and remains a global issue affecting nurse managers working in the higher education (HE) sector. Nursing faculties have not been immune from the effects of funding constraints, policy reforms and organisational restructures. Aim: This scoping review explored what is currently known about the qualities, behaviours and characteristics (core attributes) of nurse disciplinary leads that manage nursing faculties in HE. Method: Five research questions were identified, and a scoping review method was used to map a wide-ranging set of literature and concepts. Databases were searched using a prospective protocol tool, and an extraction table was created to facilitate content analysis. Findings: Ten articles that addressed one or more of the research questions were identified. While the literature described a range of core attributes required to lead nursing faculties in HE, clarity and definition of terms used were lacking, and articles were primarily opinion-based and nonevidential. Discussion: Whilst key leadership core attributes may be transferable, nurse disciplinary leads require specific knowledge of the HE sector to operate effectively in this environment. Mentorship was reported to have a highly positive impact on academic nurse leadership skill development. Conclusion: Further research is needed to identify opportunities to support the growth and readiness of future generations of nurse disciplinary leads and challenge the current deterrents inhibiting nurse academic career pathways in the Australian and New Zealand HE sectors.

Study methods

This scoping review was reported using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) published in 2018 by Tricco et al. [15] and takes into consideration the recommendations of Bradbury-Jones and Aveyard [16] to ensure rigour whilst collating, summarising and reporting results within the fifth step of scoping review protocols. The scoping review protocol was published prospectively on the open science framework (reference: 10.17605/OSF.IO/QXAJN). Inclusion criteria consisted of articles that addressed one or more of the research questions and were published from January 2010 until December 2023 in English (primary language of the researchers). The inclusion period was chosen after careful consideration of the significant changes to HE organisational structures over the last 10 years to capture contemporary data aligned to the questions in Table 1. These changes include the financial impact of government funding models and market competition that has resulted in universities seeking senior leaders with contemporary leadership skills that can deliver sound education and research outcomes within budget targets. The search strategy was inclusive of the published and grey literature through searches within Google Scholar to minimise the effect of publication bias. Exclusion criteria consisted of articles not written in English due to the focus on nurse disciplinary leads in primarily English-speaking countries (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America) and those that focused on clinical nurse leadership rather than nurse disciplinary leadership in the HE sector.

Limitations

This scoping review used precise and transparent methods throughout the review process and aligned to the PRISMA-ScR [15]. To ensure a broad search of the literature, the search strategy included five electronic bibliographic databases, and search terms were amended to ensure precision in identifying the literature that met the inclusion criteria. The selection of studies was guided by a protocol reviewed by the research team with expertise in conducting scoping reviews and prospectively published on the Open Science Framework. The data extraction tool was used to mitigate any potential reviewer bias [14] when characterising and interpretating the included articles.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Melissa Slattery; Carol Grech; Rachael Vernon; Jennifer Fereday. Nurse Disciplinary Leadership in Higher Education: A Scoping Review. Journal of Nursing Management (2025-04-20). https://doi.org/10.1155/jonm/2161553

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.