Abstract Chapter 11

Chapter 11 describes the empirical research that involved chief nurses of public and private accredited healthcare organizations throughout Italy. It shows emerging trends in the nurses’ professional and managerial career advancement. Managerial career advancement still represents the main path of job progression among nursing professions, but there is also a growing presence of specialized nursing roles recognized by healthcare organizations (especially private organizations). These are mainly found in emergency care units and the surgical area. From an administrative perspective, these professional roles have almost the same contractual status as the managerial ones. Research results show only sporadic achievement by nurses in competing for managerial roles, usually obtained by physicians. It seems of paramount importance for the nursing profession to increase their knowledge of managerial logistics and tools far from nursing’s traditional body of knowledge. Within private sector healthcare organizations, the most competitive managerial roles seem to be in education and training, quality, and clinical risk unit management. In public sector healthcare organizations, the range of opportunities for nurses to achieve competing managerial roles seems to be wider.