Empowerment for Nurses

Empowerment for Nurses

October 27, 2007

Nurses have incredible power; but few realize it and even fewer use it to improve care and to help their patients. Empowerment is not a gift that someone gives you. Rather it is a gift you give yourself by realizing the excellence you already have, embracing it, and developing it further.

Your clinical practice will improve. By recognizing the excellence that others have, it will help patient care in general improve. Nurses are the only caregiver that is at the bedside 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Nurses are also the largest body of employees in any hospital system. For these two reasons alone nurses have incredible power. For six of the last seven years the Gallup Poll has listed nurses as being the most ethical and trusted profession. Nurses are respected by their patients and by society.

So why is it that so many nurses feel disempowered?

I believe it is because most nurses do not embrace, develop, or use the incredible power they have for the good of the healthcare system. Empowerment comes from recognizing those things you do well, embracing them and wanting to validate and do them better. To “Embrace your Excellence” means to recognize what you do well and what your peers do well and to encourage your peers to embrace and develop those things that they excel at. Imagine what healthcare would be like if nurses embraced their excellence, developed it further and used their incredible power to change the healthcare system for the better. Could we solve the problems that we face in healthcare today? I think we could.

Nurses are an incredibly intelligent, creative and empathetic group of people who could come up with unique and powerful solutions to the problems we face today.

Embrace your excellence!

“Get out there and give real help!
Get out there and love!
Get out there and testify!
Get out there and create whatever you can to inspire people to claim their divine being and origin.
This is what has to be done now.
There is no time, there has never been any time for dallying and being depressed."
-Mother Teresa

Best wishes,
David W. Woodruff, MSN, RN, CNS
President, Ed4Nurses, Inc.
www.Ed4Nurses.com