The World Health Organization has designated 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife in honor of Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday.
We owe a lot to Florence Nightingale, but what about Harriet Tubman or Mary Seacole? Nursing – and society – has been changing since the days of these nursing pioneers. It’s way past time to catch up to their timeless insights and fearless activism. We owe to all these …
Can you let things roll off your shoulders? Are you the tough, no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is, stand-your-ground type? Do you show up to work no matter what? Has no one ever seen you cry at work?
Are these things resilience?
We nurses openly divulge the issues that make us leave the bedside, even amid a vast shortage of nurses. Professional organizations report these issues, and academic, and research institutes aggregate data for a convenient …
Define what true resilience means for you
One time, I applied for an emergency department (ED) nurse manager position. I thought I had the job locked up until I was asked during the interview how I would “enforce metrics.”
“Enforce.”
My holistic, qualitative research-based response to this authoritarian-style question was: “I’ll find more organic ways to achieve your metrics without shoving numbers down their throats.”
I didn’t get the job. Someone told me I wasn’t “MBA enough.”
Yet, I stand by …
Stop shoving metrics down nurses’ throats
Corporate health care mentality set up nurses up to be inhuman while holding us to superhuman expectations. We’re told to be caring — but not allowed to do it. It’s time to demand that we stop being abandoned and dismissed by dysfunctional leadership.
Early in my nursing career, I was assigned to the pediatric area for one shift in a busy emergency department (ED). Our team received notification of an incoming …
Leaving the nursing profession is bittersweet. My heart left nursing a while ago when I came to the realization that nursing left me first. It never was a two-way relationship. The profession left me without acknowledgment of work-related stress, specifically post-traumatic stress (PTS).
First responders and emergency workers often hear the phrase, “It’s just part of the job.” So we all just deal with it — or not. I’ve heard this …
Inappropriate use of emergency departments (EDs) → congested EDs → over-worked staff members → frustrated staff members → speculation of more non-emergent ED usage → expectation to provide high customer satisfaction scores → decreased actual customer satisfaction → decreased reimbursement → higher costs of ED → budget cuts → decreased staffing → return to beginning.
Whose idea was any of this? None of it makes sense to me. The idea of providing reimbursement to healthcare agencies based on customer satisfaction scores is …
The vicious cycle of emergency department use
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