20/02/2024
SOURCE: Renée Thompson - Healthy Workforce Institute.
Do you remember your first few months as a nurse? Did you love it or hate it? I still remember mine as if it were yesterday…
Reflecting on your own experience, how did you feel after orientation? Did you still love it or hate it?
Consider this: How your colleagues treated you during and after orientation—did it shape your experience?
I bet if you were nurtured and supported throughout and beyond orientation, you likely have fonder memories. If you were thrown to the wolves and left to figure it out alone, I’m guessing not so much.
Regardless of how you were treated, I want you to think about how YOU are treating new nurses.
Are you contributing to any gossip about them, or are you reminding whoever is gossiping that the entire team’s goal is to support, protect, and nurture new employees?
Are you throwing them into a difficult patient situation as a right of passage, or are you accompanying them and helping them in tough situations?
Are you always criticizing them, or are you providing them with specific positive feedback so they know exactly what to repeat?
Are you always pointing out their mistakes, or are you supporting them and reassuring them to ask questions any time they aren’t sure about ANYTHING?
Bottom line: Everyone on the healthcare team should go out of their way to welcome, support, and protect new graduate nurses (and any new team member). Just like a mother bear protects her cubs, the team needs to protect theirs too. Think about it – if EVERY healthcare team member behaved this way towards new nurses, they would safely and quickly transition into professional practice and be more likely to stay.
We need to stop imagining healthy, nurturing, and supportive work cultures and start making it a reality.
