Organisational Strategies for Women Nurses to Advance in Healthcare Leadership: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Aim. We aimed to undertake a systematic review focusing on organisational strategies that specifically advance women nurses in healthcare leadership. Background. Despite nursing being the largest health workforce and being dominated by women, they face significant barriers in career progression and have limited leadership opportunities, with a need to move from a focus on individuals to organisational level change. Methods. Methods for our overarching systematic review are published and follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist. Databases searched include MEDLINE via OVID; MEDLINE in-process and other nonindexed citations via OVID; PsycINFO; and Scopus. Any study describing a strategy that was not implemented for nurses and all non-peer-reviewed studies were excluded. Included studies were appraised using CASP checklists. A thematic analysis approach was employed to facilitate the systematic generation of themes. Results. Findings were reported under two main themes: leadership barriers and enablers and organisational strategies for advancing women nurses to leadership. The latter included: mentorship, leadership training, career planning and coaching, opportunities for networking, sponsorship, and targeted recruitment processes for increasing gender diversity in leadership roles. Conclusion. This review synthesises organisational-level strategies that advance women nurses in healthcare leadership. Barriers and individual-level strategies for advancing women nurses in healthcare leadership have been extensively studied in the current literature. Systems and organisational strategies are less studied yet show that they can advance women in nursing into healthcare leadership. Implications for Nursing Management. This paper suggests that optimising women nurses’ leadership attainment needs to shift focus from individual strategies to systemic level and organisational strategies and use tailored evidenced-based approaches.