Enough Rants: On Fostering Meaningful Dialogue
Karen Roush PhD, RN, is an assistant professor of nursing at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York, and founder of the Scholar’s Voice, which works to strengthen the voice of nursing through writing mentorship for nurses.
By Amancay Maahs/Flickr
“Patients are never satisfied!” “Only bedside nurses really understand nursing!” “Management always takes advantage of you!”
These are examples of the types of statements I’ve heard recently, whether talking with other nurses or reading blogs or other social media. Often presented as contributions to discussion, in reality they are rants—more interested in eliciting rote agreement than in true dialogue. This has got me thinking about how we create dialogue, especially about topics that stir an emotional response—particularly when anger is front and center. I’m a firm believer that:
- creating dialogue is necessary and transformative
- strong emotions are often the impetus for needed change
But we can’t allow emotions to dominate. When they do, our discussion is no longer a dialogue; it’s a rant. And rants are not productive for creating change. They eat up the energy that could otherwise be directed to positive action.
So, how do we do create dialogue about the issues that get our backs up? Here are my thoughts:
- First, we need to separate our emotions (anger and frustration, for example) from the facts of the issue. We can present our perspective and opinion, but […]
