In 2024, Nursing Catalyst surveyed more than 1,700 nurse managers to understand drivers of workload strain and unsustainability in frontline leadership. This snapshot builds on that work, highlighting how one health system redistributed nurse manager workload without changing its leadership structure or adding headcount. Click here to explore the full series.
Executive Summary
Using Nursing Catalyst’s 2024 span of control research as a foundation, ChristianaCare convened a nurse manager-led working group to audit where the role had grown unsustainable and determine which discrete work to redistribute to better-suited roles. As a result, ChristianaCare restructured the nurse manager role by redistributing workload while leaving its leadership structure, compensation, and reporting lines unchanged.
This restructure culminated in four main interventions: assigning formal direct reports to assistant nurse managers (ANMs), standardizing administrative assistant responsibilities across units, deploying an escalation framework to protect nurse managers’ off-shift time, and creating a new nurse leader emeritus role to coach newer managers.