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LinkedIn RSS  Nurses Need a Long Drive to the Boardroom  Chelsea
Rice, for HealthLeaders Media, April 15, 2013  Powerful
leadership, under-represented Nurses are the largest group of
employees, nurses are the largest budget item, and most nurses
are women. They regularly run hospitals at nights, weekends, and
holidays when no other executives and rarely any physicians are
around. This adaptive workforce can produce powerful leadership
at the top. Why aren't nurses in higher leadership positions?
"There are issues, I think, of enormous prejudice in the system
at large. When CEOs say there should be more in leadership with
clinical backgrounds, they don't mean nursing, they mean
medicine," says Connie Curran, EdD, RN, FAAN, a healthcare
executive strategies consultant.  Despite the ratio on the front
lines of patient care, only 2% of nonprofit hospital board
members are nurses while ther