The Nuts and Bolts of Nursing Leadership ... Your Toolkit for Success. Rose O. Sherman, author and publisher, 2020. http://www.emergingrnleader.com. Softcover. 258 pages. Amazon $19.95. Amazon Kindle $9.99.

According to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, roughly 3 in 10 health-care workers have weighed leaving their profession. More than half are burned out. And about 6 in 10 say stress from the pandemic has harmed their mental health. - -Washington Post, April 22, 2021

American Nursing is Having a Crisis - -The New York Times, February 28, 2021

The headlines are real. Leadership is needed to address the issues, especially nursing leadership. Dr Rose Sherman has written a book that provides a practical guide to what is necessary to attract, develop, and sustain nursing leaders, beginning with the nursing unit manager.

The nursing pipeline, from student to systems leader, has been disrupted by the pandemic. Students are short on clinical experience as hospitals stopped allowing students to gain their clinical experience during the first months of the pandemic, and some suspended Residency programs for nurse graduates. Practicing nurses are suffering from moral injury due to heavy patient loads, particularly in the intensive care units. Frontline nurses are reluctant to become managers. Managers are overwhelmed. Whether you are developing a program, revising a current one, or searching for one you can outsource, this book will identify the key elements that every program needs. Your first time through the book will remind you of the many facets of leadership and the commitment needed to succeed. Fortunately, the author has organized the book to be supportive to the reader, not intimidating. The book is divided into 5 parts, with a total of 20 chapters. Each part has an outstanding list of references. Each chapter has a summary of key points at the end. The 5 parts are as follows:

Part 1: Transitioning into Leadership

Part 2: Communicating and Collaborating in Leadership Roles

Part 3: Leading High Performance Teams

Part 4: Leading in Organizations

Part 5: Your Leadership Toolkit

There are multiple ways you could use this book. First and foremost, I would recommend senior nurse leaders appoint a professional development leader to go through the book. The book does not have an index, but a lot of wisdom has been packed into what appears to be a simple and practical guide. Professional development could then create an advisory team as to what is needed at your institution. If you are not ready to start a full program, perhaps professional development could facilitate a book club selection for frontline managers. The value in reading the book is it will help surface where the greatest need is right now. The author has created a book club guide at http://www.emergingrnleader.com. Any of these approaches could generate a needs assessment. I chose to dig deeper in a section in Chapter 14, "Managing Resistance to Change ... Resilience After a Life-Quake." What is a Life Quake? "Bruce Feiler describes a life-quake as a massive life change that is high on the Richter scale of consequences and has aftershocks for years (p. 168)." This led me to the references at the end of part 3, where there is a book listed by Bruce Feiler, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age. New York, NY: Penguin Press; 2020:177.

For me, the pandemic is in fact a life-quake. Should you begin with sorting through the aftermath of the pandemic or start with Chapter 1, "Stepping into Leadership (p. 3)." Or perhaps, budgets are due, so you pull from the chapter on budgets to help those new to the process. The beauty of this book is you have a choice. Do not be fooled by the inexpensive price. You could easily buy Kindle copies for your advisory group, a leadership retreat or, to support a budget for your leadership program. Keep one for your own bookshelf. It will remind you of what you are asking of your leaders.

-Elizabeth (Betty) Falter, MS,

BSN, RN, NEA-BC