Eight years ago, my future boss posed a question I had never expected to be asked in a job interview: "Have you ever been fired?" My answer was also something I had once not considered as even a remote possibility. "Yes," I said.

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Although some time has elapsed since that firing, I remember all too clearly when the new chief executive officer announced to our hospital executive team that our past success was of no consequence to whether or not we would be staying with his organization. He asked us each to write an essay about what changes should occur in the hospital and why we should be allowed to keep our jobs. He even asked us which board members (trustees) should be replaced on his board. The handwriting that change was about to occur was on the wall, but I was still startled when I walked into his office a few days later to be greeted with his abrupt announcement that "this place isn't big enough for both of us."

I know this sounds like a line from an old Western, but he wasn't joking. He went on to say that there was room for only one "big" leader and that was going to be him! In retrospect, I see that he was unusually honest. While I may have disagreed with his rationale, he let me know, with that one statement, that my termination was about his needs, and not about anything I had done, not done, or would be able to do, for the organization or community. The stories of highly regarded nurse executives who have lost their jobs, despite stellar job performance evaluations, indicate that few heard clear explanations as to why they had to leave organizations they served with competence and love.

As guest editors Mary O'Connor and Joyce Batcheller point out in their article, reinforced by Ellen Hamilton's first person account of her own experience, involuntary job loss is traumatic and grief inducing. It takes certain life skills to deal constructively with the subsequent painful emotions and disruptions to personal lives, in order for individual leaders to move on to new work where they can continue to make a difference for others. Nurse executives do this every year across this country, and many report that they emerge from the experience with greater strength, wisdom, and insight. Some report that their new jobs are "bigger and better" than the positions they were forced to vacate. These nurse executives epitomize resilience.

Resilience isn't necessary just for job loss, of course. As we move into the next era of health care, nurses and their colleagues are facing greater workloads, higher change management needs, decreasing clarity, and less certainty about the future of their systems and themselves. They realize that the adage, "What we say about today may not be true tomorrow," rings with amplified truth as health care transformation accelerates. The articles in this issue are meant to assist nurse leaders with understanding and coping in this environment.

Resilient people do more than cope. They face life with optimism, high esteem for themselves and others, energy, vision of how they can contribute to the betterment of the world, pride in accomplishments, strong emotional intelligence, and courage. Aren't we lucky that these are the very traits we've all seen in nurse leader colleagues?

Thanks for choosing to lead.

-Kathleen D. Sanford, DBA, RN, FACHE

Editor-in-Chief

Nursing Administration Quarterly