Transformational leadership in development of transformative education in nursing: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Regarding the dynamic and increasing needs of communities, changes in the education system are essential to train competent healthcare professionals. The study aimed to explore the experience of educational directors, teachers, and students to gain insight into the implementation of educational transformative programs. METHOD: A qualitative approach with the grounded theory method was applied in this study. Twenty-four participants were selected by using a purposive and theoretical sampling method. The data were collected from April 2019 to May 2020 in nursing schools of Tehran, through in-depth semi-structured individual face-to-face interviews and field notes. Collected data were analyzed by Corbin and Strauss’s (2015) approach. RESULTS: In this study, transformational leadership was extracted as the core concept. The core concept emerged from four sub-concepts including transformative management; educational policy requirements; providing a platform and community-centered education. CONCLUSIONS: Nurse educational directors need to achieve some competencies and capabilities for implementing transformative education in nursing schools. Also, achieving a transformative perspective by educational directors is essential.