Just a Nurse, or a Bedside Leader? Mental Models Can Be Changed

If you haven’t read the Viewpoint column in the March issue of AJN, “Just a Nurse, or a Bedside Leader?“, we recommend it. The author, Amy Constanzo, director of nursing administration at University of Cincinnati Medical Center, puts into eloquent words one of the central “unthought knowns” in the daily experience of many nurses. Constanzo writes:

“Despite the Institute of Medicine’s Future of Nursing report that calls for nurses to be ‘full partners, with physicians and other health professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States,’ the mental model of ‘just a nurse’ is still out there, inhibiting potential.”

But she’s not pessimistic. She believes “just a nurse” is a mental model like any other, and mental models can be changed—but only if you make it your quest to do so. Constanzo proposes an alternative mental model for nurses: “I am a nurse.” On the surface, it’s a simple statement, but it’s also, she believes, a statement of both strength and possibility:

“When you say ‘I am a nurse,’ you are claiming the values of nursing and your contribution to assisting patients in achieving their best level of health. To do so requires a clear vision of nursing as a profession and of nurses’ contribution to the health care team.”

How do you describe your work as a nurse—to yourself, and to others?

2017-03-03T13:18:26-05:00March 3rd, 2017|Nursing, nursing perspective|2 Comments
Read More

A Strong Case for the Professional Introduction in Nursing

nametagDo you always introduce yourself by name to your patients? Or do you simply say, “Hi, I’ll be your nurse today?”

In their Viewpoint essay in the June issue of AJN, Raeann LeBlanc and two colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Nursing make a strong case for the professional introduction, in which “a nurse states her or his full name and role in the patient’s care.”

The authors argue that professional introductions are “a powerful way to make clear the centrality of the nurse’s role in the care of the patient.” When nurses use professional introductions, we make our knowledge and expertise more visible and help patients better understand just what it is that nurses do.

The authors also address potential safety concerns nurses may have about disclosing their full name to a patient, and they offer some reasons why the importance of professional introductions may not be taught in nursing school.

[…]

2016-11-21T13:01:07-05:00June 28th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, patient experience|5 Comments
Read More

After the Angels: In Search of A ‘Knowledge-Based’ Professional Identity

If you’re looking for angels, you’ve come to the wrong place. So says GuitarGirlRN in her latest blog post.

One stereotype of nursing (and it’s perpetuated by nurses as well as by those not in the medical or nursing fields) that bothers me is that of nurses as “angels of mercy.”

We’re expected to smile while up to our elbows in bloody shit and vomit, be pleasant to rude and sometimes violent people, put up with crap from doctors, managers, patients, their families, nurse techs, and janitors yet keep our cool, never cry, never sweat, never lose our tempers with each other, always be prepared and be right there when we are needed.

Her point is that nurses are human; they do the best they can with scant resources, but they aren’t superhuman. They aren’t saints, they have lives of their own, and they can’t always be all things to all people. Back in 2005, noted author Suzanne Gordon wrote, with Sioban Nelson, an article for us called “An End to Angels.” In it, they presented the idea that nursing is a profession with a serious image problem, one that undercuts recruitment efforts and ill prepares new nurses for the reality of their work. The arguments in the article are subtle and thought provoking, and impossible to summarize. Here, anyway, is the introduction:

Nurses often disagree on the causes of and possible solutions to the current nursing shortage. Mandatory staffing ratios versus Magnet hospitals? Sign-on bonuses […]

2016-11-21T13:15:44-05:00September 14th, 2010|career, nursing perspective|4 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top