title: Searching for ethical leadership in nursing.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Attention to ethical leadership in nursing has diminished over the past several decades.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aim of our study was to investigate how frontline nurses and formal nurse leaders envision ethical nursing leadership.
  
  
  METHODS
  Meta-ethnography was used to guide our analysis and synthesis of four studies that explored the notion of ethical nursing leadership.
  
  
  METHODS
  These four original studies were conducted from 1999-2008 in Canada with 601 participants.
  
  
  METHODS
  Ethical approval from the original studies covered future analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Using the analytic strategy of lines-of-argument, we found that 1) ethical nursing leadership must be responsive to practitioners and to the contextual system in which they and formal nurse leaders work, and 2) ethical nursing leadership requires receiving and providing support to increase the capacity to practice and discuss ethics in the day-to-day.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Formal nurse leaders play a critical, yet often neglected role, in providing ethical leadership and supporting ethical nursing practice at the point of patient care.
authors.affiliation: University of Alberta, Canada kara.schickmakaroff@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: Kara Schick
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Makaroff
authors.affiliation: University of Victoria, Canada.
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Storch
authors.affiliation: University of Victoria, Canada.
authors.forename: Bernie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pauly
authors.affiliation: British Columbia Cancer Agency, Canada.
authors.forename: Lorelei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Newton
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D002170:Canada; D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D007857:Leadership; D009014:Morals; D009718:Nurse Administrators / Q000941:ethics*; D024802:Nurse's Role; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D009745:Nursing, Supervisory / Q000941:ethics; D015279:Organizational Culture; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012944:Social Support
keywords: Administrators; codes of ethics; ethical leadership; formal nurse leaders; frontline nurses; nurse executives