Power and Influence in the Nursing Field

Knowledge Helps to Build Bridges

My most respected lesson that was reviewed was "knowledge helps to build bridges. We have wrote a lot of papers and discussions on what is important in becoming a leader and being great at leadership depends 100% on your knowledge in healthcare and other areas. During all my years in nursing I have see a lot of nurses taking on leadership roles and they have never returned to school to obtain advance degrees or continuing education credits. Basically they graduated nursing school and went to work as a nurse and that is all they have done. They are completely missing the knowledge base that arises with the new leadership roles. My bachelors program and now my graduate program focused totally on how to function in leadership and manager level positions in the new nursing careers.

Don't Let Yourself Become a Wallflower

How much can you contribute to a health care team in a leadership role if you have not continued to attend courses and study that help you understand how this role is carried out. A lot of nurses have been in the hospital for 30 years, but have been nothing but a wallflower and now they step up into management and really don't know how to function to benefit the entire healthcare team. They are used to a certain amount of team members that they have stuck with for the last 30 years and attempted to buck every new change that was introduced. But now that everyone is going back to school and getting degrees and these 30 year nurses are attempting to pull rank and take these positions without any real backup knowledge of what or how to do it.