In Nursing, ‘Joy’ and ‘Work’ Are Not Mutually Exclusive

No shortage of workplace pressures.

Photo by Mark Thomas/Science Photo Library.

In virtually any health care setting today, nurses are under pressure to increase efficiencies, improve quality, and cut costs. The nonstop pressure to always do better comes in the midst of staff shortages, repeated changes in clinical protocols, struggles with EHRs that are incompatible with our workflow, and even concerns for our own physical safety. It’s no surprise that nursing turnover rates are increasing.

With all of this raining down on our heads, is it really possible to experience joy at work?

In “Finding Joy in the Workplace” in this month’s issue (free until May 7), Rose Sherman and Cynthia Blum tell us that it is. And, they argue, the work experience of nurses influences the quality of their interactions with patients:

If clinicians don’t feel hope, confidence, and psychological safety in their work, they can’t in turn offer these to their patients.

An evidence-based framework for improving joy.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is known to most of us as an organization that focuses on patient safety issues like CLABSIs, surgical site infections, falls, and medication errors. But increasingly concerned about clinician burnout (which is, after all, a patient safety […]

2019-04-24T09:26:18-04:00April 24th, 2019|career, Nursing, wellness|0 Comments
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Critical Mass at the Critical Care Nursing Conference

Boston + 9,000 nurses = NTI2018

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) is well-known for its annual National Teaching Institute (NTI), but this year, in terms of sheer scope, it surpassed all other meetings I know of. With over 9,000 attendees, registration had to be closed for the first time ever. Imagine—there were almost too many people at the Boston Convention Center, one of the largest venues in the country.

The exhibits, as always, were never-ending, with sections for industry, education, organizations, recruiters, and publishers. And as always, the “newbies” could be identified by the bags of giveaways they carted off . . . as opposed to the NTI veterans, who merely scan badges and have info sent to them.

Obstacles as opportunities for change.

Monday’s opening address by AACN president Christine Schulman was heartfelt. Reflecting on her soon-to-end year as the president and its chosen theme, “Guided by Why,” she encouraged us to explore the possibilities of making real changes when we face obstacles. And she announced that AACN was planning to take on the fundamental issue of nurse staffing:

“Inappropriate staffing has gone on for far too long. It involves many factors . . . and needs a major shift in how we think about delivering patient care.”

Body language creates and projects confidence.

The next day’s keynote address by social psychologist Amy Cuddy (see her popular TED Talk, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are“) gave attendees some insight […]

2018-06-06T12:38:27-04:00June 6th, 2018|career, Conference reports, Nursing|0 Comments
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Will Millennials Stave Off a Threatened Nursing Shortage? Hard to Say

Photo © Cultura Creative (RF) / Alamy Stock Photo.

The aging of the baby boom generation means that a large proportion of the U.S. population will soon be living with health conditions that may require complex care. At the same time, it’s estimated that a million nurses will retire by 2030, resulting in an enormous loss of experience and knowledge, not to mention the possibility of a national nursing shortage.

Millennials to the rescue? It’s complicated.

Can millennial nurses help mitigate the effects of this workforce shift? As discussed in our February AJN Reports, “Nurses Pass the Baton: Exit Baby Boomers, Enter Millennials,” millennials (born between 1982 and 2000) are becoming nurses in larger numbers than any generation before them. In fact, the nursing workforce is expected to grow by 36% between 2015 and 2030.

Why this surge of millennials? Commentators have speculated that those who reached adulthood during the recent recession may be drawn to the relative job security of the nursing profession, or that this […]

2018-02-16T08:42:08-05:00February 16th, 2018|career, Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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Experienced Bedside Nurses: An Endangered Species?

“The trend toward our hospitals being primarily populated with nurses with less than two years’ experience is worrisome.”

At least three colleagues who’ve recently been patients in hospitals or had family members who were have remarked on the youthful nurses they encountered—and on their lack of experience. In two of the conversations, my colleagues cited instances in which this lack of experience was detrimental to care, one of them dangerous. That “sixth sense,” that level of awareness that comes with lived experience and becomes part of expert clinical knowledge, is important for safe, quality patient care.

In the February editorial, I report on the answers I received when I queried our editorial board members about new nurses’ inclination to work in acute care for only two years to gain experience and then leave to pursue NP careers. Many of the board members have seen a similar trend, one reflected by research on nurse retention, some of it published in AJN (most recently, see Christine Kovner’s February 2014 study on the work patterns of newly licensed RNs, free until February 6). […]

2018-01-29T09:54:37-05:00January 29th, 2018|career, Nursing, nursing roles, patient safety, Patients|28 Comments
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A Place for Faith: Despite Chronic Illness, a Return to Bedside Nursing

flickr creative commons/by krassy can do it

Relearning the Details of Clinical Nursing

After being away from bedside nursing for over 11 years, I recently returned to this role on the same medical-surgical floor I’d worked on 11 years earlier. The impetus behind such a drastic transition was, in part, my return to nursing education as a clinical nursing instructor. As an educator, I felt the need to update my own clinical skills as I instructed young nurses eager to enter my profession.

The other reason for returning to clinical nursing had to do with a spiritual pull I felt in my heart, a hope that I’d be able to to show patients the compassion, empathy, and patience they all deserved. I’d come to realize that I’d sometimes lacked these qualities when I was a younger bedside nurse. Now I felt that God was giving me a kind of ‘do-over’—and I had to at least try to live up to this expectation.

Within the first week of orientation, I quickly realized how different things had become in the nursing world. The last time I’d worked as a clinical nurse on this very unit in 2005, the hospital was still using paper documentation, private community physicians still rounded on their patients, and there were no ‘computers […]

2017-03-08T11:17:02-05:00March 6th, 2017|career, Nursing, patient experience|5 Comments
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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.
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