Degree Name
Nursing Practice, DNP
Publication Date
12-2-2025
First Advisor
Lisa Drake
Second Advisor
Paige Wimberley
Abstract
In the increasingly complex environment of nursing education, leadership quality and responsiveness significantly influence workplace culture, faculty satisfaction, professional development, and student outcomes. Despite these realities, many academic nursing programs, including the Division of Nursing at a community college in Arkansas, lack formal structures for bidirectional leadership evaluation. This gap limits frontline faculty’s ability to provide formative feedback to program leaders, weakening shared governance and transparency. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to evaluate leadership effectiveness following the implementation of a structured bidirectional feedback process between nursing faculty and program leaders. Guided by Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Practices Framework and Lewin’s Change Theory, this project used a pre–post design to measure leadership behaviors and faculty perceptions. The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI 360) served as the validated data collection instrument, while Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles informed implementation. Participants included 19 nursing faculty and two program leaders. Results demonstrated improvements in leadership behaviors across all five LPI practices, with the largest gains observed in “Model the Way” and “Enable Others to Act.” Faculty survey feedback also reflected enhanced trust, communication, and shared accountability. Limitations included a small sample size and limited generalizability. Strengthening bidirectional evaluation supports a culture of respect, engagement, and continuous improvement within nursing education, offering a sustainable model to address faculty retention and leadership development.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Sykora, Meredith, "Establishing Nursing Excellence: A Quality Improvement Approach to Nursing Administration Evaluation Using Frontline Feedback" (2025). Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects. 252.
https://arch.astate.edu/dnp-projects/252
