Find your power by doing what empowered nurses do

As I finished my next keynote, I felt confident that I had provided probably the most comprehensive and easy-to-understand primer for achieving probably the most desired quality of nursing in 2018 – personally and professionally rejuvenated, wake-up-tomorrow-completely different, Nurse Empowerment “I am a nurse.”

That is, until Elizabeth, red-faced and screaming, stood up within the audience and punched me. “You talked all evening and didn’t tell me how to become a registered nurse,” she said.

She just didn’t understand it, I assumed. But perhaps I didn’t either because this confrontation was different from the seminar disruptions that had occurred previously. Elizabeth yelled at me as if I had let her down.

It unnerved me because I used to be used to preaching to the saved, speaking in front of consenting and nodding colleagues who attended these lectures to verify already reinforced behaviors. This time I got Elizabeth to maneuver her head side to side, demanding the formula.

“I want to have power! Tell me, what is the procedure?” she asked.

I cannot advise an easy approach, as within the hospital policy and procedure manual, with an easy goal, purpose and equipment list. There isn’t any such procedure in my repertoire. So I shut up and listened.

Elizabeth talks about her empowerment

Elizabeth had been a nurse for a very long time and had been working the identical job on the weekend shift since graduating from nursing school. She belonged to no skilled organization, read no nursing journals, and knew only a few nurses beyond the weekend staff on her unit. When she returned home, she left her skilled identity within the workplace, leaving national problems to other nurses. She had no idea what was occurring in her hospital, let alone the national health care problems. Recently, her workplace had changed into an alien landscape: workstations had been modified, units had been merged and closed, managers had equal rights with employees because of shared management, and a few employees appeared to report back to nobody.

She knew her hospital was changing and that change could eliminate her job. Her secure, familiar world of labor was out of her control. Although she had never been to a conference, Elizabeth got here to this one alone, determined to achieve strength.

All nurses, not only Elizabeth, rightly feel the necessity for control, influence, power or authority – empowerment, if only a euphemism – with the intention to obtain the resources essential to satisfy the skilled responsibilities that society has placed on them. And the nurse’s empowerment comes through information: the power to tell apart what is essential from the trivial.

Empowerment is just as necessary as love and joy

Powerful nurses are assertive in interpersonal interactions but aggressive with knowledge. They entrepreneurially scan the environment for brand spanking new opportunities and internally monitor their organizations for methods to make changes. They are on the lookout for recent solutions to old problems. They are on top of things. On the one hand, it’s a bunch activity. These nurses spend time with similarly certified nurses, pooling resources and energizing one another. The uncertainty surrounding health care reform pushed Elizabeth toward the circle and in quest of the elusive trait. She felt its weight and wanted it.

Power is tough to overestimate. It belongs to the identical category as love, joy, commitment and other tools of life, and translates into higher patient care.

Nurse empowerment helps the nurse do her job and is important for anyone in Elizabeth’s situation. I remembered a story I heard from my pastor after I was a boy. He struggled with the difficulties encountered by a parishioner who approached him and pleaded, “I feel so alone in these troubled times. How do we make faith last?” The preacher replied, “Stand with the believers. Do as they do and act as they do.”

Come on, tell me if it can be so – do what nurses with power do.

Later, after the strategic retreat, I watched Elizabeth seek for clues, exchanging opinions with local leaders. She agreed to accompany one other nurse to go to a congressman who lived in her neighborhood. They were presupposed to discuss health care reform. I could not help but think, “Elizabeth, you’re getting stronger!” Because she was there and hung out with the saved.

Courses related to “empowering nurses”

• Do you’re feeling in a position to manage your profession? Are you wondering what specialization to decide on, methods to start your skilled profession as a nurse or methods to make a change in your current profession? Find out how you’ll be able to leverage your personality traits, considering related nursing specialties and environments that you might like greater than others. Learn about leadership and lifestyle selections to create balance and motivation in your nursing calling!
• Shared governance is an organizational model that gives a structure for shared decision-making amongst professionals about practice and clinical outcomes. Shared management legitimizes nurses’ control over decision-making of their practice, while also extending their influence into some administrative areas previously controlled by managers. The popularity of shared governance is due largely to the American Center for Nurse Registration’s Magnet Recognition Program’s growing recognition that professionals need skilled structure to keep up skilled behavior and excellence in clinical performance. Hospitals competing for a magnet must meet criteria for structural nurse empowerment, that’s, display structures and processes that enable nurses of all backgrounds and roles to take part in organizational decision-making groups that influence nursing practice. An effective shared management program meets this requirement.
• Free webinar! Lots of changes in health care. Learning methods to construct a culture of innovation will help remove barriers and speed up implementation of progressive care priorities.