Where are they online? Yes, there are plenty of nurse leaders online, but where are those whose titles ring of nursing leadership? Where are the executive vice presidents, the chief nursing officers, the directors of nursing, the department managers? Where are their blogs, their Twitter streams (not only their LinkedIn profiles)? I know of a handful via Twitter, but with over 3 million registered nurses in the U.S., there has to be more. Point me to them. I’d really like to add them to my networks and daily readings.
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The Nerdy Nurse
January 31, 2011 12:39 pmAgreed!
I also would love to read their streams.
However, I fear that these people probably are not doing too much sharing as they may be fearful of loosing their jobs.
I would, however be very interested in reading their musings!
Thomas A. Coss
February 1, 2011 10:13 amThe short answer is that they’re not in nursing.
Lets begin with a common understanding: People engage in activity when they perceive the benefit to exceed the cost. One could always overstate anticipated benefits such as in starting a new business, or discount the costs such as going into crime for a living, but on balance one would not willfully engage in any activity if they would know for certain that they would be worse off for it. When’s the last time you stuck your finger in an electric outlet?
As an RN and an Economist, I’ve studied RN employment activity for over 20 years and I’ve been amazed by how little things have changed in regard to RN career choices within traditional RN roles, i.e. caring for patients. The tasks have become more complicated with new technologies, but the basics haven’t changed much.
Here is a test you can do on your own. Find a new grad who’s just started his or her career and see if they will tell you what they make. Then find another RN working on the same floor, unit or clinic for say the past ten or perhaps twenty years, and ask how much they make. Subtract the new RN’s wage from the experienced RN’s wage and you’ll see what I mean. In Economics this is the beginning of a Wage/Experience curve, the improvement of wages resulting from experience. You’ll find that the increase isn’t much.
We demand more of nursing with certification of dubious value, and now a great push for all RN’s to have Bachelors degrees, but for what reason? Does either of these make the RN more valuable, more safe, produce better outcomes? Truth is, we don’t know. We think so, and that would be my personal bias, but we’ve not pursued the evidence.
So if you had to get a Bachelors degree to be an RN, then being an RN would have to compete with say being a CPA. An RN may double (correcting for inflation) their beginning wage over a 20 year period, a CPA, will increase their beginning wage from 3 fold to as high as 10 fold, and the CPA can work out of their home. Which investment is better?
Don’t get me wrong, I love nurses and nursing, still we have to be candid with ourselves. When I left nursing to work in the medical device industry, I immediately doubled my wage, and her in points to the answer to the question; nursing leaders are out there, just not in nursing. Many of the best have “voted with their feet”, and found welcoming leaders else ware.
At this stage of my career, I would be very eager to return to a clinical environment, but I would never be hired, I don’t fit the mold. despite over ten years of Fortune 500 experience, and $300M annual budget responsibility, hospital’s would and have said, you don’t have contemporary hospital experience, declining to consider that the experience I do have may be precisely what they need for profitability.
So here we are, some of the best nursing talent one can imagine is available but unwelcome. What remains are nursing leaders adept at the current nursing paradigms with limited business world experience. And we ask ourselves where the nursing leaders are.
Tom
Pamela Ressler
February 1, 2011 4:15 pmMany of the most dynamic nurse leaders are not found the traditional hierarchy of nursing administration. We are out in the larger world making a difference through many avenues of health advocacy — as nurse entrepreneurs, health policy experts, and thought leaders in the field of patient empowerment and engagement.
Pamela Ressler
Founder of Stress Resources LLC
http://stressresources.com
@stressresources
@pamressler
nursetopia
February 1, 2011 9:14 pmYou make great points Pamela and Tom. I do agree there are *many* nurse leaders outside the traditional nursing administration system, and I do agree salaries within nursing remain a barrier to retention of brilliant leaders within that traditional system. Still, there are literally thousands of “traditional” nurse leaders within the healthcare system yet they are virtually non-existent. Why is that? The Nerdy Nurse mentions she believes they are fearful of losing their jobs. Is that so? How is it that there are numerous hospital CEOs blogging today but not one CNO (that I can find)?
Storytelling and experience-sharing is such a large part of nursing. As a growing leader, I feel like I’m missing out on a great informal education. Yes, I have nurse leaders around me, but in the age of social media I’d love for my network and growth to expand. It just strikes me as odd (and worrisome) that an entire generation of new, emerging nurse leaders are missing out on learning from seasoned nurse leaders and seasoned nurse leaders are missing out on the tremendous opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with a captive audience via new technologies.