… And who shall benefit?
Article Outline
Betty J. Shultz
When I was a student, I wrote an essay that I found recently when going through some old papers. I am going to share a small part of that essay with you. Please remember that this was written a few years ago—actually, in 1964. The title of the essay is “And Who Shall Benefit.”
I have found our lives are closely observed. People look to us to set good examples. We are expected to be expeditious, to give mental and spiritual assistance, anticipate doctors' desires, manage emergency situations, and comfort the family while remaining calm and unruffled at all times. To continue growing and learning, we must risk failure all of our lives.
How many of us have stopped and taken the time to think, “and who shall benefit” from the long hours of studying, the disappointments, and the many wonderful moments we as students have had and will have on our road to becoming professional nurses? I have, and my answer—people.
A wonderful lady by the name of Lela Myers, RN, once asked me, “Why would you spend the last several years to become a professional and not want to continue to grow and learn?” She asked me this question as it relates to belonging to AORN. I am asking you this question as it relates to working together.
What is the true meaning of nursing to each of you? Helen Keller wrote,
Many persons have the wrong idea about what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.1
Is this why many of us chose nursing as a career? Each person must answer that question individually, and I believe we all need to know the answer.
CREATING UNDERSTANDING
Having worked as both a manager and a staff member, I would like to think that I can speak to both roles. We all have a tendency to think that those who are not in the same position as us do not understand what we do or experience on a day-to-day basis; however, we need to walk in someone else's shoes before we can make judgments.
In the book Walk Awhile in My Shoes, there are open letters to managers and staff members. A letter to a manager is as follows.
Dear Manager: I am every employee, and I work in every part of this organization. My collar is blue, pink, and white… and frequently stained with the sweat that comes with hard work.
I am man, and I am woman. I'm every color, every belief, and every size. I'm old, young, and everything in between. I've worked here longer than you and not as long as you. I am a daughter. I am a son. I'm married and single, a parent and without children. I'm alone and I'm surrounded by people I care about deeply.
Sometimes you may think of me as only a number, or perhaps just another small cog in a very large wheel that you have to manage. But like you, I am a human being filled with joys, fears, frustrations, and hopes. I feel, I laugh, and I hurt. And, like you, I want to be understood, accepted, and appreciated.2
There also is a letter to an employee.
Dear Employee: I am every manager. I'm known by many labels: owner, executive, department head, supervisor, team leader, boss … and sometimes a few less flattering ones I'd rather not mention but do know exist.
I am woman, and I am man. I'm every color, every belief, and every size. I'm old, young, and everything in between. I've worked here longer than you and not as long as you. I am a son. I am a daughter. I'm married and single, a parent and without children. I'm alone and I'm surrounded by people I care about deeply.
Like you, I am a human being filled with joys, fears, frustrations, and hopes. Behind my “management façade” I feel, I laugh, and yes, I occasionally hurt. And, like you, I want to be understood, accepted and appreciated.3
We can continue to grow and learn by working together as managers and staff members. This can be accomplished with understanding, acceptance, and appreciation. Both the manager and the employee in these letters are asking that the other appreciate the fact that the work of one is no easier than the work of the other. They each have a tough job to do, although tasks often may look easier than they are, especially when someone else has to do them.
We need to understand that people usually do not wake up in the morning wanting to figure out how they can make life miserable for someone else. If you can give them the benefit of the doubt, they can give it to you.
WORKING ON RELATIONSHIPS
Each of us must assume 100% of the responsibility for our working relationships because we need one another to make each day successful. Relationships are a two-way street. If we all continue to perform our jobs to the best of our ability, it is easier for others to do the same. We must develop a mindset that to be successful in our jobs, we need each other.
Whenever you comment on the work of a peer or colleague, lead a meeting in which some new procedure or policy is explained, or sit down with a staff member to discuss his or her career track and offer advice about the future, you are acting as a trainer, coach, or mentor. An organization in which knowledge is shared rapidly, efficiently, and intelligently has a mastery of the basic techniques for mentoring and training, as well as communication.
We need to take greater control of our destiny. Change will happen in our workplaces. The question is not whether it will happen but when it will happen, because change is a constant. The question we all must ask is who or what will bring about change. Will you take charge and build personal power through your mastery of change, or will you sit back and allow yourself to become what you often may have felt yourself to be—change's victim?
The only way to take charge of change is to be its agent. You must make or motivate change, not wait for it. Change can benefit you when and where you want it to, at a pace you set and can handle, and along lines you define and control to advance your personal and career interests.
We also must stop inviting conflict. People who play politics unwittingly set themselves up for conflict. They invite others to ignore their concerns, deny their needs, and reject their feelings. We must hold people accountable for their own actions at all levels of health care, just as we must hold ourselves accountable for our own actions.
If aggression is the cause of conflict, the antidote is assertiveness. Assertiveness is a way of behaving that permits you to feel good about yourself and others and get what you want out of life. People who assert themselves maintain their self-respect, pursue happiness, satisfy personal needs, and defend personal rights—all without abusing anyone. Just as important, they do not approach others with the fear of being hurt or controlled. No matter what your position, the way you look, live, and perform in your chosen environment tells the world what it is that you stand for in life and what you think of yourself.
RECOGNIZING EMPLOYEES
The goal of every organization is to ensure its employees are better than those of the competition, not better than each other. We fail employees when we have a recognition program that creates losers because there is not enough room in the winner's circle. We need to tie a manager's success to employees' success. If you want competition, benchmark your organization's success against your best competitor, and rally everyone to close the gap if you are behind or widen it if you are ahead. If a team generates an idea, credit everyone on the team. Sharing credit goes a long way toward developing teamwork and minimizing competition among team members.
Most people do not leave a job voluntarily because of pay, the amount of work, or the number of hours. They leave because their relationship with their immediate supervisor is not working. What are your employee turnover rates? If you are a manager and your department has a revolving door through which employees come and go constantly, you might want to take a good look at how you work with and relate to others. With the current nursing shortage, we all want to retain staff members. It costs a lot more to orient, train, and educate new employees than it does to keep the ones we have.
When mentoring new employees or students in the OR, do you encourage them to learn, or do you show them all the downsides to perioperative nursing? Are you aggressive or assertive in these relationships? To draw younger nurses into our profession, all perioperative nurses must make newcomers feel valued. The same holds true for those perioperative nurses who are older than the average age of perioperative nurses (ie, 47 years). Do we make them feel valued for what they have to contribute? In reality, we should make all employees feel valued no matter what their job description. By working together to appreciate what everyone brings to the table, we only will make our profession stronger, and we will grow and learn.
This brings us back to my first question—who shall benefit? If we start appreciating, understanding, and accepting each other for what we bring to the workplace, the answer is all of us, as well as those we care for as professionals.
NOTES
- In: Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul: 101 Stories to Celebrate, Honor and Inspire the Nursing Profession . Deerfield Beach, Fla: Health Communications, Inc; 2001;p. 1
- . In: Walk Awhile in My Shoes: Gut Level, Real-world Messages Between Managers and Employees . Dallas: Performance Publishing Co; 1996;p. 2
- Ibid.
PII: S0001-2092(06)60703-5
doi:10.1016/S0001-2092(06)60703-5
© 2003 AORN, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.
