Leadership - RCN support

Products and services

Here is an alphabetical listing of RCN products and services relating to this clinical governance theme. We make clear in the description for each entry whether the product or service is available exclusively to RCN members.

Leadership programmes

The RCN offers a variety of leadership programmes that can enable you to enhance your practice and influence health and social care policy at local or national level. Learning and development can have a significant impact on improving the working lives of nursing staff and the quality of care for service users. If you want to boost your political, strategic or clinical leadership skills, the RCN can help you to develop your know-how through the following programmes. See the RCN leadership programmes.

The Leading for Quality Care programme has been developed by the Royal College of Nursing for new and established health and social care practitioners who manage and lead a team. The programme builds on the award winning RCN clinical leadership programme. It uses the NHS Leadership Qualities Framework as the core in which to sustain leadership development thereby ensuring long term investment in the leaders of today and tomorrow.

Learning and development consultancy service

The RCN consultancy service works with organisations in all areas of health and social care to support improvements in care, careers for staff and the workplace. The service offers expertise in several areas including leadership. View the: Consultancy service.

Learning Zone

The Learning Zone is available to RCN members only. Visit the Learning Zone

  • Exploring leadership - this continuing professional development is based on a need for all nursing staff to lead the way in providing excellent patient care. “Leadership is not about being a manager - it's about doing your job really well, staying motivated and showing initiative. Whether you are an HCA, a student nurse, a newly qualified nurse or an experienced practitioner there's leadership potential in everyone, and this material is here to help you on your way to reaching your potential." Visit exploring leadership.
  • Team effectiveness - this learning area will help you to develop a clear understanding of teamwork and team effectiveness. For anyone interested in improving ways of teamworking, this resource offers useful, stimulating and practical ideas, while also aiming to address some of the challenges facing teams employed in rapidly changing environments. The audience for this resource, therefore, is anyone who works in a team or would like to learn more about successful teamworking. Visit team effectiveness.
  • Career development - the career development learning area can help you to consider important issues related to career development, placing you in a stronger position to make career choices. The learning area includes a career profile on management and leadership. Visit career development.

Nurse leaders

This section of the website is dedicated to supporting and developing nurse leaders. The RCN committed to providing you with the support, development resources and opportunities to enable you to be successful in your role. You can find the information on how we can help you within this area of the website. Visit nurse leaders.

Nurses in Management and Leadership Forum

The Nurses in Management and Leadership Forum will help RCN members to keep up to date with what is going on in health and social care by bringing them news and links to keep abreast of developments in the RCN and the UK. Membership of this fourm will allow you to network with colleagues, pose questions and discuss important issues. See the Nurses in Management and Leadership Forum.

Policy and International Department

The Policy and International Department has established a number of processes that help RCN members and other interested parties to understand and engage in the process of policy development.

The department works proactively with a range of governmental and non-governmental organisations to analyse, understand, and influence the development of health and social care policy. As part of sharing that learning with members, and encouraging involvement, the team has produced briefings on a number of issues that impact on nurses and nursing. The briefings have been catalogued by the year in which they were produced, starting from 2005. View the policy briefings.

Policy and International Unit: consultations

This section of the RCN website lists policy consultation documents that are currently active and enables members to participate in the RCN's response to those consultations. View the consultations.

Practice development

The RCN practice development's mission is to enable individuals, teams and organisations to create a culture that values, sustains and enables practice development for the purpose of improving services to users. See practice development.