Imagine this: You’re sitting in your nursing professional practice council meeting. The topic comes up around creating an educational intervention for the clinical nursing staff around the topic of career resilience. The group starts discussing logistics of the program and how nursing staff will be able to participate. A colleague on your left says, “How will we get the nurses out of the numbers to attend this workshop? We barely have staffing on our units to cover patient care.” Another person, at the end of the table, agrees saying, “We won’t be able to afford this on our unit. In fact, we’ve cut out all indirect time recently and need to watch our spending per our director of nursing.” The room nods and side chatter erupts about not having enough time, staffing or resources. You’re sitting there wishing you were somewhere else… somewhere where nursing staff could go to workshops, attend conferences, and heck… even take the time to sit down and eat a lunch! Oh what a dream…

That ‘dream’ can actually become your reality.

You can be a change agent in shifting the culture on your nursing unit. You can become a role-model, helping your nursing peers to shift their mindset from lack to abundance. It just takes one person to start the ripple effect of positive change. It may be challenging, yet I’m here to help you along the way.

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If you’re a nurse like me, you probably have heard of the objections that come up: ‘We don’t have the staffing’. Or: ‘There isn’t room in the budget for that’. The worst yet: ‘There’s never enough time’. Guess what? Saying that is like multiplying the outcome in ten-fold.

What you think about, you bring about and in terms of nursing culture, if we focus on, think about, and speak ‘lack mentality’ words- that’s exactly what we’ll continue to get. Instead of fixating on what we don’t have or what we did wrong- let’s shift this.

Here are 3 Steps to a New and Innovative Nursing Practice

• Pause. It’s easy to get sucked into the negative conversations. When one person starts, we all chime in. It’s as if we are wearing some sort of badge of honor. We all want to outdo the next with just how bad off we have it. To be the change agent in your nursing career, you’ve got to have the awareness that this is even occurring. Sometimes, when we get so busy and full of the task lists, we function on auto-pilot. This first step is about actually being mindful of the moment and speaking up to do something about it. If you notice your nursing team has gone off course, simply pause and ask them to notice the conversation.
• Practice. Now once you’ve got their attention this is make-or-break time. We are calling our group to this awareness, not to judge them, but simply to invite them to become aware about these practices with us. This is your time to shine and step into your nurse leader. To shift the conversation you may ask them to bring the attention back to the results. You may suggest that they suspend all disbelief for a moment and simply picture what it would look like if they were able to have the resources they need. You may encourage them to focus on the present and what resources they do have in this moment.
• Empower. Remember above where I said that what we focus on we bring into our realities? This is due to the universal law of attraction. I go about these and other universal laws in my upcoming book, Your Next Shift, but for the purposes of this post- here’s what you can do next. Invite them to focus on their strengths. What is working well? How does the group function as a team? What talents, qualities and capabilities can you pull from? You want to leverage your nursing strengths (group and individual) to get more of the good stuff.

Don’t believe me? Start small with an exercise on your own before you bring this to your nursing group. Observe your own thinking and language. Any time you find yourself traveling down the rabbit hole of ‘not enough’, stop yourself in that moment. Practice re-wording your thoughts and language and then find something positive to focus on within your own life. You may indulge in a gratitude practice. Or reflect on an accomplishment. Whatever it takes to focus on the strengths.

I’d love to hear from you! Have you tried this before? How did it work for you? If you haven’t tried, what’s holding you back? Let us know your experiences by leaving a comment or question below. Thanks for reading!

About the Author: As a speaker, workshop facilitator, and Reiki Master, Elizabeth partners with hospitals, organizations, associations, and nursing groups to help transform the field of nursing from the inside out. As the  host of the Your Next Shift Workshop, Elizabeth guides nurses and nursing students to a change in perspective, helping them make the inner shift needed to better maneuver the sometimes challenging realities of being a caregiver.