Chief Nursing Executive Certificate

Elevate Your Nursing Leadership

As a nurse, you are more than just a caregiver, an educator, and a patient advocate. You are the eyes and ears of your healthcare organization, making a critical impact on enterprise-level decisions. Consequently, the need for nurse leadership has soared to an all-time high, driven by a host of complex challenges, including a shortage of nurses, a rise in chronic disease, and an aging baby boomer population.

The Chief Nursing Executive Certificate program from Emory Executive Education is designed and led by Emory’s foremost thought leaders in business and nursing leadership. Dane Peterson, former president and chief operating officer; Bob Dent, vice president of patient services and chief nursing officer; Trina Geyer, director of nursing leadership and development; and other Emory Healthcare leaders bring their vast experience and expertise in nursing leadership, healthcare and business management, patient care, and finance to the program. The five-month immersive curriculum is focused on providing the frameworks, skills, and experience you need to develop innovative healthcare delivery models and create a strategic vision to lead your team of nurses and your organization through any healthcare challenge.

Who Is This Program For?

The Chief Nursing Executive Certificate program is ideal for you if you are:

• A current or new nurse executive who is seeking to enhance your business acumen and nursing skill set
• An aspiring nurse executive who will soon take on leadership challenges in your healthcare organization
• A senior nursing leader looking to acquire new skills and expand your influence as you move toward an executive-level position

Participants are required to have:

• Minimum 10 years of combined experience in nursing and management roles
• Fluency in written and spoken English

What You Will Learn in the Program

The program will help you:

• Understand the forces of change impacting today’s healthcare organizations, the specific needs of organizations, and the chief nursing executive’s role in driving transformation
• Sharpen your communication, conflict management, and influencing skills
• Strengthen your decision making and better manage people, teams, and conflicts in your role
• Develop strategies to guide yourself and your team of nurses and manage team performance
• Identify your organization's strategic placement of incentives to better motivate people and teams, manage key drivers of healthcare spending, and improve patient care
• Learn to manage clinical operations, liaising between the nursing, administration, and medical staff while ensuring that patients receive the highest standard of care
• Evaluate your organization’s current tools and methods for assessing well-being and create a well-being initiative to propose to your organization
• Acquire skills that are instrumental to navigating the complexities of healthcare and emerge as a leader who can mobilize teams to effect patient and organizational change
• Gain new perspectives, skills, and tools to play a more strategic role in decision making, change initiatives, and the future success of your organization

Capstone Project

As a key part of the program, you will address a real-world business challenge you might encounter in the role of a chief nursing executive. Drawing on core concepts, you will demonstrate your ability to help improve patient care, ensure the well-being of your nursing team, and guide executive-level decision-making within your organization. You will come away with a series of application examples that you can reference and refine as you advance in your leadership career.