Background: The Covid-19 crisis has created new and difficult working conditions for all frontline healthcare staff and leaders. Ward managers in particular have faced significant challenges. The practice development initiative described in this article began at a hospital in Denmark immediately after the country’s first Covid-19 wave. The hospital has person-centredness as its vision for care and research.

Aim: The purpose of this article is to offer a reflection on the ways in which our research and its findings enabled us to learn from the experiences of ward managers so as to support them and strengthen their network during a difficult time, using principles of practice development.

Conclusion and implications for practice: The evidence produced in the project was found to be relevant to leadership practice by the ward managers and led to a strengthened position at a time of crisis. This implies that:

• It is possible to establish collaborative and useful evidence for clinical practice under difficult circumstances
• By using principles of practice development it is possible to facilitate constructive dialogues between ward managers and executive managers
• At a time of a major crisis, the role of ward managers should not be underestimated

This article by Bibi Hølge-Hazelton, Elizabeth Rosted, Line Zacho Borre, Brendan McCormack and Mette Kjerholt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License.