Extending the reach of nursing leadership: The GNLI™ Facilitator Training Programme

From 18-21 August, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) held its first Global Nursing Leadership Institute™ (GNLI) Facilitators’ Training Programme.

Responding to the current situation of COVID-19 around the world, and the need for a virtual alternative to ICN’s flagship leadership programme for nurses, the Facilitators Training Programme aims to create a cadre of trained facilitators to support the delivery of GNLI 2020 and future ICN programmes. The role of the GNLI regional facilitator is to help ensure that GNLI 2020 scholars around the world experience outstanding learning.

Twenty-three people from 22 countries were accepted on to the facilitators course.

GNLI is a strategic leadership programme, which prepares top nurses from around the world to drive policy that improves the health of people, health care and the nursing profession. The programme, which was launched in 2009, comprises three modules over six months, including a residential workshop held in Switzerland. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time, GNLI 2020 will hold a virtual programme, 18-25 September, in place of the residential week.

ICN President, Annette Kennedy, said, “The need to support, encourage and mentor nursing leaders for the future is one of the recommendations of the World Health Organization’s State of the World’s Nursing report, published earlier this year. GNLI has been developing nursing leaders for over 10 years. By taking GNLI online this year as a virtual offering, this Facilitators’ Training Programme will extend the reach of GNLI and enable nurses to take their rightful place in developing healthcare policy in the post-COVID future.”

The World Health Organization’s State of the World’s Nursing report, which was published earlier this year, contains strategic directions for the profession including promoting and supporting nursing leadership in health systems around the world. The report also points out that the most effective nurse leaders have robust supportive development programmes to help them on their journey.

Addressing the facilitators online, ICN’s Chief Executive Officer, Howard Catton, said, “GNLI is a huge piece of the jigsaw in terms of producing future nursing leaders of the world, but we have the ambition to do even more and that is where you, the facilitators, fit in. COVID has changed the world for all of us and it creates the opportunity for us to design and build the future that we want. All of you have an important role to play in connecting and bringing together GNLI alumni within your regions and supporting regional training in the future.”

ICN is working closely with WHO and leading the work to take the discussions on the State of the World’s Nursing, the response to COVID, and the post-COVID environment out to the nurses on the ground. The GNLI Facilitators Training Programme plays a major part in this work.

The programme will be led professionally by two top nurse leaders who are the GNLI 2020 Programme Co-Directors: Professor Jane Salvage and Dr Diana J. Mason. Their leadership of GNLI has been highly evaluated by previous participants. Professor Salvage, from the United Kingdom, is well known globally as a nursing and health policy activist, leader, trainer and author. Though her work with WHO, ICN and others she has run leadership programmes and workshops in many countries. Dr Mason, from the United States, is a leader in nursing and healthcare, journalist, scholar, and educator, and past president of the American Academy of Nursing. Both were also award-winning editors of their countries' leading nursing journals, Nursing Times and the American Journal of Nursing.

Download the press release here