It’s refreshing and wonderful that the American public is finally focused on the need for nurses and the essential service that we bring to the society. It’s gratifying to know that — finally — Americans are concerned about the health and well-being of the nursing profession. It’s exciting to think that nursing careers are achieving increased status and respect.

However, it’s dismaying to realize that there are conditions internal to nursing and nurses that are blockading that improved status and respect. It’s more dismaying that these internal blockades will continue to make it difficult to recruit and retain ambitious, proud, competent, and compassionate people as nurses.

When I spoke at a Nursing Spectrum Career Fitness^® Expo in Boston, I asked participants to name the number one problem they saw in nursing. The responses were almost evenly divided between those who saw the staffing shortage as primary and those who saw the “nurses eat their young” attitude as being the most problematic. My own response to these perceptions was that these problems are the ying and yang of the nursing shortage. One feeds the other in an ever-downward spiral.

The truth is, this nation can spend millions of dollars and invest countless resources in the recruitment of nurses, but if the working conditions and attitudes that nurses encounter once they are working are not remedied, the nursing shortage will not go away.

There are certain realities of nursing that make it hard work. The complexity of patient care, the need for coverage on nights, weekends, and holidays, and the emotional challenges of caring for sick and dying patients all come with the territory and cannot be changed. But, the attitudes and behaviors that nurses encounter in their interactions with other nurses is entirely within our control.

It is all too easy to blame “them” — administration, the CEO, insurance companies, nurses working in other areas, for the current state of the landscape of nursing. The problem with the “blame game” is that nobody ever wins: People feel victimized and helpless, and all the energy expended doesn’t solve the problem. Einstein once observed that the thinking that caused the problem is inadequate for solving the problem. Nurses who want nursing to improve need to change the way they think about nursing, themselves, and other nurses.

Change the Way You Think

I recently returned to a part-time staff nursing position after a several year hiatus. Some of the things I have witnessed and experienced in regards to how nurses treat each other have been appalling.

There’s the long-standing tradition of the evening shift complaining about what the day shift doesn’t do, the night staff complaining about days and evenings, and everybody complaining about the night staff. Nobody, of course, deals directly with the people involved so that misunderstandings and difficulties can be dealt with in an adult way and corrected. The griping goes on underground and poisons the workplace. I started nursing school in 1960, a very long time ago. That kind of backstabbing griping existed then; it’s disappointing to discover that we still haven’t learned to directly address our mutual concerns and move on to more productive — and happier — ways of relating. It’s sad to think that we, as a profession, too often are not supportive and affirming of each other.

Don’t Give Consent

No individual can control anyone else’s attitude or behavior. The only behavior and attitude that I can control is my own. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one makes your feel inferior without your consent.” If I’m blaming someone for how I feel, I’m giving away my power and ducking my responsibility to my integrity and myself. Given that the “eat their young” attitude exists and that nursing is challenging and stressful even under the best of circumstances, what can you do to take back control?

Each day when we go to work, we can resolve to be just as positive, friendly, and supportive of other staff as possible. We can resolve to not let the griping that goes on detract from maintaining a positive, upbeat attitude.

Several years ago, when I was working at a hospital that was being closed and tension and anxiety were skyrocketing, I used the “force field method.” This is the mental corollary of wearing a gown when one is apt to be exposed to body fluids. Each day before entering the hospital, I put a mental force field around myself that would not admit any negative energy. There were times when I sneaked into the staff lounge during a shift and coached myself: “The force field is getting a bit thin here. Take a big deep breath and release the negative energy.”

I found that I could reassert my feelings of being calm and in control by paying attention and taking responsibility for how I was feeling and reacting. As I was working in a psychiatric facility, it was therapeutic for me to stay out of the emotional swirl of negative energy. It was certainly healthier for me. I was also a better resource for both patients and my colleagues as we went through a very challenging experience. I had chanced upon a strategy for “interior rededication” that was positive and productive.

Make a Positive Proclamation

The dictionary tells us that the root of dedicate is the Latin dedicare, which means “to give out tidings; proclaim.” Did you ever stop to think that each and every action and attitude that we make as professional nurses is a proclamation? We make a statement about our core values and beliefs whenever we speak and each time we act. Interior rededication involves each of us inventorying our own attitudes and actions (not those of our colleagues) and assessing what type of proclamation we are making about ourselves, our colleagues, and our career choice, and deciding if we can or want to make our proclamation healthier and more productive.

If each of us would commit to the interior rededication of extending the compassion and caring to ourselves and our colleagues, we could change the internal conditions within our profession that are causing so many to rethink their decisions to become nurses. The anger drain that so many of us slip down is way too costly for our profession. I’m not sure which is worse, that nurses decide that they don’t like the conditions and leave or that they decide that they don’t like the conditions and they stay. Either way, the nursing profession and the healthcare consumer loses.

Nursing as a profession is the sum total of what we nurses think of ourselves. We can’t make the compassionate, supportive, powerful image of nursing be our proclamation while we are making comments like “just a nurse,” taking pride in the fact that we eat our young, or being angry with our peers and not addressing the issues.

Rededicate Yourself

To engage in your own interior rededication, ask yourself some questions —

• “What if I only responded with respect and compassion to my colleagues?”
• “What if I only responded to myself with supportive and caring responses?”
• “What if I refused to engage in attitudes/behaviors that demean or criticize others (particularly behind their backs)?”
• “What if I took an active role in confronting the angry, nonproductive behaviors?”
• “What if I constantly reminded myself that we are all doing the very best we can under very challenging circumstances?”
• “What if I allowed myself to believe that the vision of nursing I held as a new nurse was possible?”

If each of us took responsibility for our own interior rededication, we could reexperience the deep satisfaction that we seek as nurses, the satisfaction that comes with making a critical, profound difference for each of our patients. We could proclaim what a fine profession nursing is. We could proclaim that nurses are worthy of respect, great pay, and of taking a place at the decision-making table as an equal partner. We could rehabilitate our profession.

Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Nursing is not a small group. It is a large group of committed, thoughtful people. Some interior rededication can change our world.

Rita H. Losee, RN, ScD, is CEO — chief enthusiasm officer — of Total Success!, a company dedicated to creating the rich, satisfying lives that result when physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual balance and growth are achieved.