Keynote Speaker Urges Nurses to Expand Their Leadership Role

Denver, CO—Beverly Malone, RN, PhD, FAAN, Chief Executive Officer of the National League for Nursing, delivered the keynote address at the 2011 Association of Women’s Health, Obstet - ric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) annual convention, calling on nurses to help implement the recommendations issued earlier this year by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), urging all nursing professionals to return to nursing’s “core values.”

Dr Malone spoke about the nursing experience with tremendous depth and breadth and was rewarded with a standing ovation. She began by noting that the AWHONN convention was “coming at the right moment,” that is, at a time of change and challenge as the role of nursing rapidly expands.

Nurses “can lead and work with colleagues in a way that is professional and collaborative,” she said, especially if they keep core values in mind. These core values, which are the formal goals of the National League for Nursing, are:

• Caring
• Integrity
• Diversity
• Excellence.

Caring involves promoting health and healing, and fostering hope in response to the human condition, she said. “We can’t wait until the patient encounter, and then ask if anyone has brought some hope,” she said. “Nurses carry the hope. Hope flows through us. We bring hope to the encounter.”

Integrity, she continued, is demanded of nurses “without conditions or limitations.” Diversity is not just about skin color, but about “ideals” as well.

Excellence means creating and implementing transformative strategies “with daring ingenuity,” she said. Such transformation is represented by the following example: “If I give you $1 and you give me 4 quarters, you have given me ‘change.’ But if I give you $1 and you give me $5 back, we have transformed the situation. We are not just going for change, but transformation,” Dr Malone told the audience. “We are looking for added value.”

And “real excellence” is a moving target that slips away before it is secured. “The pursuit of excellence is really what we want,” she emphasized.

A Blueprint for Change

The Future of Nursing report is an action-oriented blueprint for change, urging nurses to take a greater leadership role to meet the increasing demands of healthcare. The report marks “the first time someone outside of nursing affirmed what we know inside to be true,” Dr Malone said.

The IOM report validates the critical role of nurses and gives credence to the expanding role of nursing, she said. It essentially affirms that “the glue holding the system together is nursing, but we have been the invisible glue,” she said. “It’s now time for us to become visible.”

The future of nursing lies in satisfying 5 key areas highlighted in the IOM report:

• Scope of practice
• Academic progression
• Data collection
• Leadership
• Education.

Dr Malone emphasized that all nurses—not just advanced practice nurses—should “practice to their full scope,” because “the United States will need this.” She urged nurses to continue their education and not to pause for so many “deep breaths” between degrees.

Nurses must also strive for leadership positions, she added. “Gallup polls show nurses to be the most trusted professionals, but we aren’t at the decision-making tables. Committees at your hospital need nurses,” she said.

Advice for Nurses

Dr Malone advised her nursing colleagues to:

• Create a vision and share it. “The beauty of this is that someone will buy into it, and take it in a new direction.”
• Create and maintain boundaries. “Sometimes we lose sight of where our boundaries end and begin.”
• Develop resilience. “We all get knocked down. The point is to keep getting up.”
• Maintain mastery. “Nursing is a lifelong learning endeavor. We need the best prepared nursing work force possible.”
• Be a mentor. “Mentoring helps distinguish between a wall and a door; it helps us figure things out.”
• Show joy for what you do. “We talk about the pain. We need to show our joy as well and not let others take it away, including our colleagues.”