A Pioneering Spirit: Leaders as Framers in Turbulent Times
Will it always be like this? A critical care nurse leader was recently asked this question by one of her…
Leadership and Mentoring
A Pioneering Spirit: What new graduates need from nurse leaders
Many nursing students are graduating and will be transitioning into practice. The good news is that jobs for new graduates…
An encouraging word
Has a compliment ever made your day? Perhaps it was just what you needed to hear to raise your self-confidence…
An ounce of prevention
Engage in practical training through Project Firstline. A lifetime of working with patients with serious burn injuries truly ingrained in…
Any nurse can do it: Sustaining change when volunteering overseas
Arriving back in Ethiopia for the third time after having left only four months earlier, I had many questions. Had…
Benefits of feedback for nurse leaders
Viewing feedback as a gift enhances career growth. Takeaways: Without feedback, beginning nurse leaders’ careers can be derailed Constructive feedback…
Beyond thank you: The powerful reach of meaningful recognition
“I recognize that voice, that voice belongs to someone who is such a dream to me. [My nurse] was a…
Boosting your influence
Jessie was excited to be appointed as chair of the professional practice council in her hospital. She envisioned being able…
Bringing nursing orientation back to life
Our hospital systems’ journey to obtain Magnet® recognition led to an excellent opportunity: the chance to revamp and improve our nursing…
Building a sense of community on nursing units
Jeff Rawson, a new nurse graduate, works on a behavioral health unit. His manager believes his transition is going well—until…
Building a strong shared governance foundation
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give…
Building Your Communication Skills
In her Harvard University Division of Continuing Education Professional Development website blog, Marjorie Lee North, a consultant for political candidates,…
Building Your Communication Skills – Part 2
The second installment of Marjorie Lee North’s Harvard University Division of Continuing Education Professional Development website blog, focuses on putting…
Building Your Communication Skills Part 3
Marjorie Lee North, a consultant for political candidates, physicians, and lawyers, presented these ten tips in her blog on the…
Carefronting: An innovative approach to managing conflict
Nick Chase is an emergency department (ED) charge nurse. He and Michelle Stanley have worked together for the past 3…
Caring for older lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults
Current discussions on the unique health issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations have prompted the healthcare professions…
Change maker
Dori Healey is passionate about patient safety, public service, and volunteering. President-elect for American Nurses Association (ANA)-Idaho, Dori Healey, MSN-RN,…
Choosing the right conversation
It’s 7:10 A.M. Maggie, the night-shift charge nurse, is waiting to give report to Julie, the charge nurse on the…
Choosing your political battles
Mary*, a new manager in the operating room, prides herself on being a strong advocate for her staff, quickly acting…
Civility starts with you
Over the last decade, civility has become a hot topic. I got involved with it in 2000, when more than…
Collaboration: The key to healthcare transformation
Transforming health care is a complex challenge that can best be met through a coordinated response from academia and clinical practice. Working together, chief…
Collective genius as a tool for engagement and improvement
When bedside caregivers are engaged in their work, patient outcomes are improved, the patient experience is enhanced, and staff satisfaction…
Confronting conflict with higher-ups
Conflict in the workplace is a fact of life, and dealing with it is never easy. Sometimes it seems easier…
Constructive feedback and disciplinary action
The thought of telling someone that he or she is not doing a great job provokes anxiety for many of…
Creating high-performance interprofessional teams
Kate Summer, a nurse case manager on a telemetry unit, is leading an initiative to reduce the 30-day readmission rate…
Dealing with difficult people
Jackie Jacobs is a charge nurse in a busy intensive care unit. She prides herself on being able to get…
Empowering nurses to transform health care globally: A United States-Haiti nursing partnership
Since the Magnet® Vision was published in 2008, it has inspired actions by nurses at Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH), a…
Enhance your self-awareness to be an authentic leader
In 2013 alone, U.S. organizations spent more than $15 billion on leadership development activities. Although much of these expenses focus…
Face your fears and forge ahead
Cathleen Wheatley steps up to a challenge. Cathleen Wheatley, DNP, RN, CENP, is president of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center…
Fostering soft skills is a must for nurse leaders
It’s uncommon for nurse leaders to have to coach employees on clinical skills, but quite common for nurse leaders to…
From our readers: Do we really know who our patients are?
Both nurse leaders and educators need to teach and model not only day-to-day nursing skills but the importance of connecting…
From our readers: How a ‘45-year-old STEMI’ showed me the human side of nursing
I worked as an emergency medical technician-paramedic for almost 8 years in a rural area before I became a registered…
From our readers: How mentorship affects retention rates of new nurses
You likely vividly remember the day you learned you were officially a licensed professional registered nurse. You were excited to…
From our readers: My first code—A retrospective report of a premature promotion and a crisis situation
The elevator’s walls were covered in bronze and silver raised metal squares that gave the appearance of a magic eye…
From our readers: Nurses leading from the middle
Nurse leaders are needed at all levels of the organization, especially in “the middle,” which is commonly used to describe…
From our readers: Resolving the forces of bias and duty in caring for incarcerated patients
In the nurses’ station of the 39-bed med-surg unit I double-checked my patient’s 2:00 PM medications against the pharmacy sheet…
From our readers…Balancing the power in favor of patients
Ms. Sims, a bedside nurse featured by Leah Curtin earlier this year inspired me to write this article. At the…
From our readers…Caring for the world by recycling supplies
I became aware of the acute lack of essential medical supplies when I participated in medical missions work in the…
From our readers…Do veteran nurses really eat their young? Observations of an ‘older’ new nurse
After working successfully for more than 20 years as a graphic artist and structural designer, I decided to enter nursing…
From our readers…Hunger advocacy for nurses
Since the mid-1990s, the number of hungry people worldwide has been steadily increasing. Currently about 925 million people worldwide are…
From our readers…Strengthening nursing networks
Have you ever wondered what happened to the student who studied with you for that beginning med-surg test or the…
From our readers…What bedside nurses can teach nursing leaders
Five years ago, while working in leadership I had a pivotal conversation with my superior regarding the need to “stop…
Frontline nurses and transformational leadership
A key to quality and safety In 2011, the Institute of Medicine called for nurses in all settings and levels…
Gaining confidence in public speaking
EVA, a professional practice coordinator, and her team of clinical educators are thrilled to learn that their abstract on an iLead in…
Heavy Reading: Inside Nursing
Diversity, equity, and inclusion can’t be authentically incorporated into curricula when faculty assign textbooks that harm those whose health they…
How to avoid biased thinking
Jessica, a Millennial (Generation Y) nurse working on a medical-surgical unit, recently completed her first year of practice. Ralph, her…
How to create “sticky” messages to influence others
Nursing has been ranked as the most trustworthy of all professions for the past decade, except for firefighters after 9/11.…
How to get off the anger-go-round
One of the most complex emotions, anger is a normal response to certain situational triggers. It’s associated with physiologic changes,…
Implementing purposeful daily leadership rounding: A broader approach to measuring quality
Patient satisfaction has long been one way that hospitals measured quality, albeit indirectly. The surgical services division of Rush University…
Imposter syndrome: When you feel like you’re faking it
Colleen Jackson recently was promoted to a clinical manager position on her unit. At first, she was thrilled with the…
Informal leaders and cultural change
Informal leaders are crucial to the success of a change involving the nursing team, yet they are often overlooked. A…
Introverts can be nurse leaders, too
Natalie Sanchez recently was promoted to a nurse manager position. So far, she thinks, things are going well. She is…
Lead to succeed through generational differences
Chelsea enters the unit chewing gum and texting on her new smart phone. Deb stands there, waiting to get report.…
Leading at the bedside and beyond
A typical definition for a leader is one who has the ability to influence. Florence Nightingale, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin…
Leading the journey: Engaging staff in process improvement through visual management
The pressure is always on in busy clinical settings to improve efficiency, capacity, and patient flow. Strategic process improvement that…
Leading through failure
I have served as a nurse corps officer in the United States Air Force for 27 years. One of my…
Leading through loss: Lessons for healthcare leaders
One of the most painful experiences for any parent is the death of a child. The family is deeply affected…
Learning from mistakes
Today’s healthcare organizations need to improve patient safety, which includes effectively communicating information to nurses about safety incidents and how…
Making the workplace healthier, one self-aware nurse at a time
From the disruptive physician throwing instruments or treating nurses with contempt to coworkers or nurse managers “eating their young,” some…
Mindful Awareness
Tip 3 of 6 Mindfulness Exercises You Can Try Today This exercise is designed to cultivate a heightened awareness and…
Mindful Listening
Tip 4 of 6 Mindfulness Exercises You Can Try Today This exercise is designed to open your ears to sound…
Nine principles of successful nursing leadership
There is an extraordinary quality of spirit that prompts one to aspire to lead. These nine principles will help you…
Not just “eating our young”: Workplace bullying strikes experienced nurses, too
Even though nursing is a profession of caring and compassion, bullying exists in many forms in it. Bullying threatens teamwork,…
Nurses in a children’s classroom: Showcasing nursing as a career choice
We would like to share our experiences as yearly participants in our local Hillsborough County Great American Teach-In (GATI). GATI,…
Nurses’ essential role in supporting professionalism
Key takeaways – Most nurses behave professionally and ethically. – A tiered approach to intervention when unprofessional behavior occurs offers…
Nursing Story Slams: Creating a Space for Nurses To Tell Their Stories
Storytelling is essential to increasing health literacy, empathy, curiosity, and engagement — and who has better stories than nurses? That is why…
One-on-one meetings: The stitch in time that saves nine
Remember the last time you had a loose button? Maybe you thought about stopping to sew it on, but never…
Practicing emotional intelligence may help reduce lateral violence
It’s been a stressful day at work — nothing new. Your patient fell, an I.V. line became occluded right when…
Principled leadership and the imperative for workplace civility
Civility is not situational. What a leader must manifest all day, every day, is civility, because civility is—or at least…
Recovery lessons from the Sandy Hook trauma
Children are people with small hearts and big emotions that often come from the people around them, particularly family members.…
Releasing our attachments to the past
Jake, a critical care nursing director, works for a large healthcare system that has invested heavily in testing the use…
Safeguarding patients: The courageous communication solution
Preventable medical errors account for 440,000 deaths each year and are the third leading cause of death in the United States. According…
Scope and standards-of-practice documents: Guiding you to leadership success
Starting a new job in a new specialty can be a daunting experience. I recently transitioned to a new role…
Scrapbooks capture nurses career milestones
For nurse graduates, starting their first staff position is an exciting time, but it can also be a time of…
Springing into action: How one procedural area kept working during COVID-19
As COVID-19 hit Georgia in early March 2020, Emory University System made the difficult decision to stop all surgeries and…
Squashing the communication triangle
In the infamous and deadly Bermuda Triangle, things seem to disappear, never to be seen again. In the communication triangle,…
Stopping the pain: The role of nurse leaders in providing organizational resources to reduce disruptive behavior
As articles ranging from those in American Nurse Today (“Civility starts with you”) to The New York Times (“When the…
Taking the first steps to serving on a board
Nurses have a singular perspective on patient care and community health. With our training and experience, we can inform and…
Ten tips for transitioning from home care nurse to nurse manager
Sarah made the transition from inpatient hospital nurse to home care (HC) nurse 6 years ago. She enjoys her practice…
The little things we do
In December 2001, the graduating class of New York University’s College of Nursing asked me to give a speech during…
The Most Important Leadership Competencies, According to Leaders Around the World
In a March 2016 article published in Harvard Business Review, certified executive coach Dr. Sunnie Giles explores the top 10…
The pandemic and early career nurses
Find support, shape the profession via input, action. During the peaks and valleys of the now 15-month COVID-19 pandemic, nurses…
The Power of Introverts
Are you an introvert? If so, you may think you don’t have the right personality to be a nurse leader.…
The power of Lean Six Sigma
Lean and Six Sigma are well-established quality improvement tools. Combining the two creates a synergistic effect, boosting effectiveness. In the…
The power of the positive
Being positive in a negative situation is not naïve. It’s leadership. — Ralph S. Marston, Jr., author and publisher of The…
The selflessness and dedication of military nurses
Thirty years ago, Brigadier General Sarah Wells began the tradition of gathering nurses together to place flowers on the graves of…
Thinking it through: The path to reflective leadership
Reflective leadership is a way of approaching the work of being a leader by leading one’s life with presence and…
Thoughtful feedback loop: A nurse’s approach to personal and organizational improvement
As a nurse, your partnership with another in the Thoughtful Feedback Loop gives you the power to exponentially increase the…
Too young to be a nurse leader?
Marla Johnson began her career on an oncology unit after graduating from a BSN program 4 years ago. She achieved…
Uplifting nurses
Associations respond to member needs in a pandemic. In 2020, what kept me up at night was nurses’ well-being and…
Viewpoint: Adding respect to freedom of speech
The right to freedom of speech is a common topic in the news, but the reporting often doesn’t include a…
Viewpoint: Lessons learned from nurses in rural Uganda
It’s still dark outside our tiny pup tent, and the air feels humid after the sudden torrential downpour the evening…
What followers want in their nurse leaders
Why would anyone want you to lead them? That’s a question nurses rarely ask themselves before they take on leadership…
What you can learn from failure
Editor’s note: At American Nurse Today, we believe every nurse can be a leader. Rose Sherman, founder of the Emerging RN Leader blog (www.emergingrnleader.com), contributes articles on a regular basis to help nurses achieve their leadership potential. Rachel is an experienced critical care nurse who prides herself on her
When caregiving ignites burnout – New ways to douse the flames
Most nurses enjoy taking care of others — it’s what drew them into their profession and provides satisfaction throughout their…
Why disruption can be a good thing
Seventy-two seconds into liftoff, a defective mechanical part set off a string of events that caused the Challenger space shuttle…
Why timing is crucial in leadership
For the last 2 years, Karen, the manager of a critical care unit, has been laying the groundwork for her…
