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Aims and objectives To identify how nurse leaders view and experience the opportunities offered by one of the largest global nursing organisations Sigma Theta Tau International. Background Worldwide, nursing leadership is challenged with addressing the complex issues impacting on care delivery. International nursing organisations are a means to bring together individuals to promote leadership and scholarship for nursing practice to promote patient safety and quality care. The newly established all-England chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International is a recent addition to the society in terms of nurse leadership in Europe, as such faces challenges as it establishes its identity and seeks to interpret the organisational vision: to advance world health through nursing leadership and scholarship. Moving forward, members views were sought on the goals of the chapter and how they may be enacted. Design In July 2013, all chapter members at that time had been nominated on the basis of achievement in nurse leadership; all were invited to participate in an online survey. The online questionnaire contained a series of closed and open questions. Results Most respondents joined because they believed in the vision and networking opportunities Sigma Theta Tau International provides. Three themes were extracted from the data: the value of networking and communication, leadership and the development of culturally sensitive organisations and the need for shared scholarship for nursing practice. Conclusion Findings indicate the growth of effective leadership at all levels of nursing could be harnessed through successful collaboration and keen support for robust connections between practice and education to promote quality care. Relevance to clinical practice Whilst challenging, globalisation presents an opportunity for a nursing society such as Sigma Theta Tau International to work collaboratively to address healthcare issues. A nursing society that explores and resolves its own complex issues by actively promoting leadership and collaborative scholarship reveals a potential to empower the profession to share our collective solutions towards enhancing clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Increasingly, it is being suggested that translational gaps might be eradicated or narrowed by bringing research users and producers closer together, a theory that is largely untested. This paper reports a national study to fill a gap in the evidence about the conditions, processes and outcomes related to collaboration and implementation.Methods: A longitudinal realist evaluation using multiple qualitative methods case studies was conducted with three Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research in Care (England). Data were collected over four rounds of theory development, refinement and testing. Over 200 participants were involved in semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations of events and meetings, and stakeholder engagement. A combined inductive and deductive data analysis process was focused on proposition refinement and testing iteratively over data collection rounds.Results: The quality of existing relationships between higher education and local health service, and views about whether implementation was a collaborative act, created a path dependency. Where implementation was perceived to be removed from service and there was a lack of organisational connections, this resulted in a focus on knowledge production and transfer, rather than co-production. The collaborations' architectures were counterproductive because they did not facilitate connectivity and had emphasised professional and epistemic boundaries. More distributed leadership was associated with greater potential for engagement. The creation of boundary spanning roles was the most visible investment in implementation, and credible individuals in these roles resulted in cross-boundary work, in facilitation and in direct impacts. The academic-practice divide played out strongly as a context for motivation to engage, in that 'what's in it for me' resulted in variable levels of engagement along a co-operation-collaboration continuum. Learning within and across collaborations was patchy depending on attention to evaluation.Conclusions: These collaborations did not emerge from a vacuum, and they needed time to learn and develop. Their life cycle started with their position on collaboration, knowledge and implementation. More impactful attempts at collective action in implementation might be determined by the deliberate alignment of a number of features, including foundational relationships, vision, values, structures and processes and views about the nature of the collaboration and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]