Letting Your Nursing Career Magic Out of the Hat

Nurses, do you need some magic to get your nursing career back on track? Career development for nurses isn't rocket science, but manifesting some magic and joy for the betterment of your career is certainly possible if you want it. Is it time to let the rabbit out of the hat?

Overcoming Mission Drift in Your Nursing Career

Has your nursing career drifted off course? Do you feel that your current career path isn't aligned with your personal or professional mission? You're not alone, and there's something you can do about it.

Six Steps to Being a Better Nurse Communicator

One of the most important non-clinical skills for a nurse to develop is strong powers of communication. Nursing care is built on the foundation of communication -- both patients and colleagues figure largely in a nurse's world, and being able to listen well and speak your truth clearly is absolutely essential both on the job and in your daily life. 

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

Lions, Gazelles, and Nurses: The Herd Mentality at Work

Nursing has a hierarchy of power and experience just like any other profession; in fact, it also has a hierarchy that sometimes feels akin to the laws of survival on the savanna or in the jungle.

Have you ever observed that the less experienced and more vulnerable nurses frequently get left on the outside, often falling prey to bullies and "predators"? This is the herd mentality at its worst, and many novice nurses are taken down by bullies and power-hungry colleagues who eat them alive when they're demonstrating the slightest weakness.

Nurses, Nursing, and the Nature of Suffering

In the course of many nurses' healthcare careers, witnessing the illness, suffering, and death of others is commonplace. From dialysis and med-surg to home health and the ICU, nurses create therapeutic relationships with patients and their families, providing spiritual and emotional comfort, compassion, and expert skilled care based on many decades of nursing science and evidence-based interventions.

Aside from witnessing the challenges faced by others, nurses are themselves human beings with their own life experiences, victories, and suffering. How a nurse navigates their own personal suffering plays a role in determining how they approach life, work, and the overlapping of the two.

Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash

Your Nursing Job: The Same Old Bed of Nails or a Comfortable Old Shoe?

Some of us have nursing jobs that are feel like a bed of nails, and some of us nurses have jobs that feel like comfortable old shoes. Have you ever fallen into either of these categories in terms of your work experience as a nurse? I posit that either one can be detrimental to your career in the long run.

Doing Your Inner Work as a Nurse

Nurses spend a great deal of time providing care for others, and even in non-clinical roles they carry many psychoemotional weights on their shoulders. Nurses give physical care (including that which is immediately life-saving), compassionate connection, and spiritual succor, often in the form of motivational conversation and nurse-to-patient teaching.

What is a powerful way for us nurses to empower and elevate our understanding of human behavior, the human condition, and the nature of suffering? By assiduously doing our own inner work throughout a long lifetime of giving, loving, and feeling.

The Five Rights Of A Healthy Work Environment

Several years ago, I gave a presentation at a northern California nursing conference on the subject of healthy work environments for nurses. During my preparations, I spent a great deal of time pondering aloud about the scourge of nurse bullying and lateral violence, as well as why healthcare workplaces lend themselves so readily to unhealthy work conditions.

There are many reasons that bullying and unhealthy workplaces have become so common, and I’m sure that you, dear Reader, can rattle off a few without even thinking for more than a nanosecond.

The Three R's of Nursing

There are some very basic things that nurses look for -- and deserve -- in the course of their nursing careers. It's clear that this list could probably be expanded to include many other ideas as well. I posit  that there are "Three R's" of nursing, and I identify them as respect, remuneration, and recognition.

The Nurse, the Martyr, and the Oxygen Mask

Over the years, I’ve known a plethora nurses. I’ve known new nurses, seasoned nurses, frightened nurses, burned-out nurses, and nurses who were so jaded they couldn’t even see their patients if they were right in front of their noses. I’ve known nurses who clocked out at the end of their shift and never looked back, and I’ve known others who consistently clocked out two hours late and then were up all night hoping their patients were OK. It takes all kinds, and some suffer unnecessarily more than others. 

Six Reasons to Love Millennial Nurses

The Millennial generation (those born between approximately 1980 and 2000) are the new majority in the 21st-century workforce (see this Pew research study identifying this cohort as 35% of the overall workforce), and Millennial nurses are on their way to dominating the nursing profession.

As one generation wanes and the other rises, power changes hands, and this is happening at this very moment as Generation X and the Baby Boomers reach retirement age and leave the workforce in droves.

Every generation is disparaged and criticized by the generations that came before, and Millennials are no exception. However, I hypothesize that the Millennial generation is going to positively transform nursing, medicine, and healthcare for the better, not to mention society at large.

(Please note: writing about any generation as a whole is potentially problematic due to the fact that generalizations must be made. My apologies in advance for any statements that don't quite apply to everyone -- this is simply an attempt to capture observations of the power and potential that this enormously influential generation holds in its collective hands.)

Photo by William Stitt on Unsplash

Nurses Leaning Into Uncertainty

Throughout history, nurses have provided care to those in need despite the cultural circumstances or political scenarios at hand. Nursing care, like medicine, is a necessary service that simply needs to be provided in a society at all times. No matter that bullets are flying, elections are being disputed, or a pandemic is raging, nurses are there with their patients even as uncertainty rules the day.

A Pandemic "Marshall Plan"​?

When World War II ended, a massive global recovery plan was initiated, and we enjoy the positive reverberations of that plan to this day. The dawning of 2021 and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic call for nothing less than a similar worldwide initiative. Are we truly ready to collectively embrace this humanitarian call to arms?

Hope, Fear, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

As I write these words, shipments of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine based on breakthrough mRNA technology have been arriving to hospitals for several days, with the first shots already having been administered. Simultaneously, we've now surpassed an awful milestone of 300,000 Americans lost to the virus, which is akin to the entire population of Pittsburgh being wiped out. With frequently more than 3,000 dead on any given day (the comparison being that we lost approximately 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001), the expected post-Thanksgiving surge is upon us, just as experts forewarned (and the public ignored).

With Christmas and the New Year ahead of us, now is not the time for the doffing of masks and giving up on social distancing and other recommended measures. In fact, it's time for us to double down and work together in order to move us into 2021 with hope for seeing this pandemic in the rearview mirror.

COVID-19: Misaligned Priorities and Missed Opportunities

(Note: this blog post was originally published on LinkedIn.) 

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, information and misinformation travel like wildfire. Meanwhile, as we individually and collectively struggle with aligning our priorities and making good choices, things get overlooked and left in the dust, including people.

Missteps have been the hallmark of the pandemic here in the United States, especially when it comes to the Trump administration's lackluster and criminally misguided response, denial of reality, rejection of science, and the consistent undermining of expertise.

No matter the administration in power, mistakes and missed opportunities will continue to be made, just not as purposefully and cynically as that of the Trump White House and its spineless Republican lackeys.

                                                                                                Photo by Adli Wahid on Unsplash.com

The Profound Meaning of Nurses' Week During a Pandemic: Nurses Show Up

Nurses' Week is upon us, and May 12th, 2020 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Florence Nightingale, the veritable progenitor of the modern profession of nursing. Meanwhile, we also find ourselves in the middle of the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife as declared late in 2019 by the World Health Organization (WHO), the healthcare arm of the United Nations. Add to this the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have a recipe for a very profound moment when it comes to nurses and the nursing profession in this global context.

Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels.com

Nurse Keith's 4-1-20 COVID-19 Roundup

In these days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems like the world is upside down and inside out. We are all reeling from the overwhelming disruption of most every aspect of human life: economics, work, and career; education across the lifespan, from preschool to post-doctoral research; faith communities; migrant workers; the undocumented; the frail, elderly, and vulnerable; transportation; small business; and the actual details of survival, including food, clothing companionship, and shelter.

Other than those still living who experienced World War II, the Holocaust, or even the 1918 so-called "Spanish Flu", none of us have a memory of such a devastating worldwide event. The AIDS epidemic at its awful zenith in the 1980s is the closest we've come since the Second World War, and that was enough to strike fear into the hearts of many and cause massive loss throughout the 80s and 90s until we got a handle on the virus and rendered it mostly a chronic illness that can be survived for decades by most infected individuals.

Photo by Tai's Captures on Unsplash

COVID-19, Nurses, and Staying Informed in Trying Times

Greetings from Nurse Keith Nation HQ here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I'm spending the majority of my waking hours monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely in order to inform myself and my online tribe of nurses and healthcare professionals. Like many others, I'm doing my best to stay up-to-date and use my various platforms (as well as good old-fashioned emails and phone calls) to educate and inform as many people as I can about the latest developments regarding this very real pandemic sweeping the globe.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay 

Seven Traits of Effective Nurse Leaders

Please enjoy this guest post from Samantha Boone of Aspen University:

“Rejoice in your work; never lose sight of the nursing leader you are now and the nursing leader you will become.” – Sue Fitzsimons

Leadership shapes innovation and change, and as more and more baby boomers retire, the baton is being passed down to new generations of nurse leaders. “Senior leaders look to surround themselves with creative and talented individuals to accomplish not only organizational goals but also a shared vision,” says Dr. Marcos Gayol, Assistant Dean of Nursing at Aspen University. “In doing so, they also provide these same individuals with opportunities for growth, involvement, and fellowship with career advancement goals in mind.”

APRNs and 21st-Century American Healthcare

Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) are an increasingly important fixture within the 21^st-century American healthcare system and nursing profession. Full practice authority is a central key to APRNs’ ability to fulfill the needs of the American public, and it’s time for such authority to be granted nationwide.