Joyce Clifford, center, meets with others from the Institute for Nursing Healthcare Leadership (INHL).

The Institute for Nursing Healthcare Leadership

Thursday, October 18, 2007

HMI develops a range of programs designed to increase nursing competence and leadership. Many of these programs draw upon the resources and expertise of the Institute for Nursing Healthcare Leadership (INHL), a Boston-based non-profit organization dedicated to advancing nursing practice through leadership development, research, and collaborative activities.

INHL, led by Joyce Clifford, PhD, RN, FAAN (at center in above photo), provides the unifying organizational structure through which nurses in a consortium of six Harvard Medical School-affiliated hospitals collaborate on nursing professional development activities. Among those activities are education programs customized for individual nurses and nurse groups from abroad.  

"We have a strong interest in global health and in teaching and learning from international visitors, and our partnership with HMI is an opportunity to try to impact patient outcomes everywhere.”
-- Joyce Clifford, President and CEO of INHL

The international programs developed by INHL fall into three areas: clinical observation programs focused on an identified clinical area or career interest, fellowships for nurses at an advanced level of practice, and study groups for nurses from a single hospital or other grouping.

The clinical observation programs are the most popular course of study for foreign nurses, and the most common form of collaboration between HMI and INHL. Nurses come to Boston individually or as a group having identified a specific set of objectives. INHL then works to identify a good fit for the nurses, in most cases placing them in one or more of the hospitals that form the consortium. While in Boston, in addition to following a customized program in the stated area of interest, the visiting nurses receive instruction in areas such as leadership, quality improvement, and doctor-nurse collaboration. INHL also urges them to develop a project to implement in their home institution.