Supporting clinical nursing leadership and professional practice at the unit level.

Professional practice models (PPMs) are innovative approaches for improving health care delivery. Implementation of these new practice models needs to be well planned and supported to ensure their success in producing desired outcomes. This article describes two programs used to implement a PPM in a health care organization, focusing mainly on a program design intended to support the implementation of a new PPM on a medical-surgical hospital unit. The program blends the concepts of the organization's PPM with the leadership concepts from the AACN's Clinical Nurse Leader role to help nurses further develop their professional behaviors and clinical leadership skills.