The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) recently published revised academic standards for professional nursing education, The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education (Essentials) (2021). For the graduate prepared nurse, the new Essentials requires a transformative approach to nursing education to not only meet the new required competencies but to demonstrate the contribution of graduate nursing education at the highest quality level for best patient-family-population health experience and outcomes. The Essentials were revised with the goal to act as the bridge between education and practice to narrow the gap to accomplish this vision.

The Essentials and the evolving healthcare landscape creates a need for nursing education in the United States (U.S.) to enter an era where the preparation of nurses requires advanced knowledge and skill to effectively practice in the complex dynamics of the healthcare environment (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2021; Giddens & Mansfield, 2023; Lis et al., 2014). With innovative research and technologies driving healthcare advancement, use of informatics and technology, new treatment and care regimens, societal and population shifts, and the ever-changing financial healthcare landscape, nurses need to be proficient in their ability to navigate the system to ensure health and well-being across all settings and populations (Lis et al., 2014). The COVID-19 pandemic further provided evidence in the identification of health care gaps and challenges including the significance for interprofessional collaboration, which influence the ability of the nursing workforce to respond in ensuring health equity across populations (Jordan et al., 2022; Norful et al., 2022).

The significance of interprofessional collaboration is well established in having positive effects on care delivery. A team-approach to care with interprofessional collaboration has shown to be effective to improve the continuity and coordination of care with improved patient outcomes (Cramm & Nieboer, 2012; Jordan et al., 2022). Interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) as defined, an integrative cooperation of multiple healthcare professionals, working together with complementary competences and skills to ensure the best delivery of care, is difficult to achieve (Jordan et al., 2022; White-Williams & Shirey, 2022; World Health Organization, 2010). Studies noted the difficulty in implementing IPCP with many challenges such as, communication inadequacies, differing goals of team members, and perceived power structures (Jabbar et al., 2023; Rawlinson et al., 2021).

In recognition of the challenges future nurses are facing and the significances of interprofessional collaborative practice to care, nursing academics need to respond to prepare nurses to be proficient in their ability to lead and navigate the system to ensure health across populations within an interprofessional team-based environment. Now is a critical time to re-examine nursing education's curricula and pedagogy to address the knowledge required and the skills needed to prepare graduate nurses to meet the health needs of diverse individuals and populations, and to address the gaps in the US healthcare system (Giddens & Mansfield, 2023). Thereby, the aim of this project was to develop an innovative, Master of Science Nursing and Interprofessional Leadership program (MS-IPL), where nursing leadership is broadly perceived to include all nurses as leaders. This program is intended for nurses that want to advance their professional knowledge and skills to address health and health care delivery complexities at the master's level, to not only participate in healthcare but to lead within it.