Girard, F., Linton, N., & Besner, J.. (2011). Professional Practice in Nursing: A Framework. Healthcare Quarterly, 14,(3). Retrieved from http://www.longwoods.com/content/19028.

“Ensuring that nurses can practise according to the philosophical underpinnings of their profession is recognized as an important factor in job satisfaction and is therefore a key element of retention and recruitment of the nursing workforce. Creating a culture of excellence requires making explicit a set of values and performance expectations to which all nurses can subscribe and that influences practice behaviours. The vice president and chief nursing officer of a large health region in Western Canada therefore sought to establish a foundation for building such a culture of excellence, through the creation of a mission, vision and Professional Practice Framework for the region’s nurses. The author describes the development of the nursing Professional Practice Framework for this health region, presents the results of a participatory approach to promoting nurses’ ownership of the model and discusses plans for assessing the impact of the framework on nurses’ practice and patient care.”