Are the “Seven Nursing Truths” Truthful? (Part II)

In a previous blog post, I the first 3 truths from a article appearing on the Reflections on Nursing Leadership magazine’s Website, entitled “What Nursing Leaders Know: Seven Truths From top Health Care Professionals.” This week, I would like to discuss truths 4-7.

4. The biggest value in being designated a Magnet hospital is creating a Magnet culture. We all know that culture trumps strategy and operations in a successful heatlh care system. By recognizing the components of the CHRISTUS brand and developing energy around our mission, values and vision, CHRISTUS has developed a strong foundation on which to overlay the 10 “magnets for magnet designation. We have crosswalked the requirement for success on our Journey to Excellance, Joint Commission, the Baldrige Award and Magnet stats and found they are all similar. Getting the award, however, is not the success. Creating the culture to sustain the successful behavior is!

5. Nursing needs a voice. We couldn’t agree more! If great nursing is a critical success factor, what they think is also critical. That is why the Chief Nursing Officers for our regions are members of the C-Suite, and the System Director of Quality is a nurse, along with the System Director for Nursing Education and Research.

6. Quality of care is based on confidence and competence. Although the statement is true, I believe a minority of nurses come out of their education and training programs with the all the confidence and competencies they need to be successful today. This is occurring for many reasons, which I will not articulate at this time. However, let me substitute or add another truth of my own:
The greatest mistake we made was to close hospital-based nursing schools because we saw them as a “cost center.” Because of the lack of sufficient on-the-job clinical training of recent nurse graduates, CHRISTUS Health has had to develop costly “nursing intern” programs for new hires to give them the confidence and competence our patients require today.

7. Nurse leaders need support now more than ever. Nurse leaders are no different than all other heatlh care leaders in this respect. We are all facing numerous challenges in a complex industry that is frequently changing. These complexities will only increase because of the lingering effects of the global economic recession and the changes yet to come as a result of health care reform.

To be successful, we all need to support each other so together as a team, physician, nurse, administrator, etc., are all successful, both in their personal and professional lives.