Lynette - Nurses save lives. Nurses change lives. Nurses heal.

Lynette -







I was excited to begin my management career in nursing but at my first management meeting I saw a different perspective from the administrative side. I was appalled because I saw supervisors denigrating their staff to other supervisors. I thought, "Why aren't you working with your staff? If they're doing something wrong, you're the problem because you haven't managed it." I didn't say anything. I just kept quiet and thought to myself "I'm going to do it differently.” I saw my role as caring for the care giver.

I began to work with my new strategy as I took over the nursery and the post partum unit. There were challenges – staff didn't have a clue how things should work. Just by default, they would take the first answer to a question written in a communication book as gospel for the new policy.
I didn't criticize and I never dictated an answer but I made it clear that we needed to come up with systems to make the right decisions and in a way that included all key players. I worked toward getting to the right answer through identifying best practices and getting cooperation.

My responsibilities increased to include Labor and Delivery. This was a challenge as a new manager as I found the nurses in labor and delivery to be very strong, opinionated, and in this particular unit, loving a crisis."We need a collaborative model, with doctors, administrators and nurses all working together. To get there, nurses have to own their power." They were excellent practitioners and did their work exceptionally well – a patient would come in, they would fly around meeting the needs of not just the mother, but also the baby on board. However, on an organizational level, they preferred crisis management; they didn't trust that I or anyone in management would represent their needs. They were used to complaining about management but when presented with the opportunity, they resisted being involved and accountable for their own empowerment.

I worked hard to help them envision on how we could manage our unit together, as a team. There were times the staff got frustrated with me because it took time to create the structure and systems to support a participatory process. I created a visual image to help them understand – "I'm like a diver under water building a foundation for the bridge. Pretty soon you'll be able to see the bridge – the results." Once the foundation was built, our systems and structure expedited change when it was needed. It took me three years to achieve full participation but it was very rewarding as they became a phenomenal empowered staff!
I later managed a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit that had a reputation of being “the worst unit of their organization”. They didn’t support their peers and they were not aligned with the organization. The staff self identified they “ate their young.” Using the same fundamentals, the unit was transformed into an organization leader and received two quality awards for their achievements. One for a culture change which included mentoring new grads into strong PICU nurses rather than eating their young. The second for facilitating a medication delivery model for all children treated within the organization.

Our nursing leadership team had the opportunity of working with a great an organizational trainer learning Continuous Quality Management. During this time, one of my peers gave me some feedback as part of an assignment – she told me I have a very strong personality. That freaked me out because coming from my background with strong religious overtones, I was “supposed to be” nice. Very nice! Because I was learning new communication techniques, I said, "I perceive you as having a strong personality too and yet that doesn’t intimidate me. Why does my strong personality bother you?" She said she'd think about it. Later she admitted to me she had been envious of me because I had so much fun with my employees. I think being nice vs. being strong is another issue nursing has struggled with.

Historically nurses have not been empowered. As a new nurse I was very naïve and didn't get that nurses weren’t empowered. For example, I saw the pediatric intensive care unit as “my unit” and I was damn proud of the care we gave. The nurses worked hard and well together in the unit, and though we had a manager, we didn't see her that much. We didn’t feel like we needed to see her because we were able to make changes we felt were necessary. One time after some remodeling, there was an open house during which all the head honchos were congratulating themselves on their unit and their accomplishments. It dawned on me that "I am just a peon; they don't see me or my peers. We're all little peons, insignificant in their big scheme of things."

I wanted nurses to be more than bodies who come in to do whatever needs to be done while the doctors run the ship and the administrators control the finances. Nurses change lives. Nurses save lives. Nurses heal people. My vision and goal became to be part of the movement to elevate nursing as a profession. Leah Curtain was a touchstone providing vision for my nursing leadership. I used another image of identifying the continuum of where nursing is and the goal of where nursing should be. My goal has been to make a difference – to personally move the nursing profession on the continuum closer to the ideal.

We need a collaborative model with doctors, administrators and nurses all working together. Nursing has so much to offer. To get there, nurses have to own their power.

I used to be uncomfortable with power or with wanting to have power. I did not want power for my own personal gain. I learned to accept my power because that's how I can be effective, help people and make the right things happen.

Once a doctor said to me, "You always win. Things go the way you want." I said, "No, our decisions are made for the right thing to happen." But inside myself I thought, "Yes, I do always win ….. because I strive for the right decision." It felt good.

Power Strategies: Collaboration, Power, Standards
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