community
If you are a church-goer or a self-help consumer, you know that “Community” has become a buzzword.
Community can be described as a group of people that have location in common. In this new age of internet living, community is used as a word to describe a group of folks that are like-minded. We often read or hear people talk about “who you are in community with.”
In nursing, and healthcare in general, there are several communities to which you might belong; of your choosing, or chosen for you. You are part of the community of nursing at large; the community of nursing in your facility. You may be in the community of charge nurses; RN’s, LPN’s, ER nurses, ICU nurses, etc. You get the picture.
As the pandemic races on, nurses find themselves in a community of “heroes” that they have never been in before. The appreciation and reverence for nurses, from the public, in 2020-2021, has been deeply felt by nurses.
Another community that nurses are in is the area and population in which they live. This is where the new title of hero is felt the most. Our community has done “howl for healthcare”, given gift-cards, written letters and notes, sent food, and on and on.
Employers, on the other hand, seemed to have gone in the opposite direction and have left us out of the “community” they are caring about. Hospitals across the United States have opened up new inpatient areas to house patients (that are just curtained off areas) to make capacity numbers look manageable on paper but play out very differently in reality. Hospitals are continuing to do elective surgeries while housing ICU patients in non-ICU areas because Covid 19 continues to bring patient after patient into the hospital. Every unit is at capacity; but with hospitals creating “new” areas to place inpatients, the community, at large, is told they can still take more patients.
When you are a Director of Nursing or the Chief Nursing Officer what communities do you belong to? Who are you to be fighting for? Are you a nurses’ nurse? Or have you put that community aside for a different one that you would like to belong to and concentrate on?
When nurses see that their leadership/Management has made the community which they serve the people living in the geographical area around the hospital and not the staff IN the hospital, there is a problem. When hospital administration only encourages nurses to be safe and courageous without showing any signs of recognizing that nurses are always thinking about safety for their patients and they are courageous for showing up every shift in the most unsafe times to make sure that their patients are safe and cared for. When nurses are feeling less than seen and less than heard they do not feel in community with their management. They feel used and abused. Yes nurses get paid for the work that they do but it takes a lot more than that for a hospital to retain staff.
It’s a fine line that healthcare administrations have to walk between caring for the community around the hospital or healthcare system and caring for the community IN the healthcare system. It seems as if the models of leadership have gotten all messed up. If leadership is truly leading their team, then they are caring for and taking care of the team; so that, the team can take care of the customer/patient. When the leadership is only concerned with the community around the healthcare system the team providing care fumbles along trying to fit their care of patients into the ever changing, unstable, untrustworthy new world that is created, so that they can take care of the patients.
I am proud to be in the community of bedside nurses. I am disappointed with nursing leadership during the Covid 19 era.
Just some thoughts….