I am starting a series for our newsletter to include a leadership topic along with passing along news in the nursing community. I wanted to focus on the positive in nursing and leadership. Subscribe to receive notification when our newsletter comes out. We publish twice a month.
James Altucher. wrote “Nobody is 100% original. This is the anxiety of influence. Almost all of our decisions and even creativity are outsourced to the people around us who influence us: peers, teachers, religion, parents, bosses, etc.” (Reinvent yourself, James Altucher).
Influence has been defined as “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself” (Oxford Languages).
I think about the people who have influenced me in life. My parents, my friends, co-workers, and bosses. I also think about the people I have had the opportunity to influence. My nieces and nephews, my fellow nurses, patients, and the people I meant on a daily basis.
One of my biggest influencers is a nurse that I know, who mentored me when I was just a student. This nurse, Matilda Barber, is as great leader in our community. She had a way of making people comfortable and inviting them into what she was doing, eliciting their support. It is known in the community, if you want tickets sold to your charity event, call Matilda. I remember watching her interact with business leaders, politicians, hospital administrators, and the like with ease. She was just as comfortable in the boardroom as she was in the park selling hot dogs and ice cream for charity. She has a way of bringing people together from all walks of life. Even now in her retirement, she is volunteering and helping others. The power of her influence is still felt in the community, so much so, the local community college named a nursing scholarship in her honor.
As I reflect on my life, I realize that I am the sum of the influences in my life. I think I get my knack for filling and saving documents from my dad. My dad saved everything, including my old report cards. He also instilled in me a love education. I remember during the summer, my father had “Daddy School.” He would help us learn throughout the summer and worked with us in workbooks. From my mom, I get my drive to serve and to be of service. My mom, an evangelist and jail chaplain, is still tending to others. Her influence in the local community in Toledo is such that a banquet has been planned in her honor.
How do you use your influence? You may say, “I am not very influential. No one knows me.” You will be surprised. As a nurse, you have more influence than you know. You influence a patient to take better care of his health, by teaching him to make better food choices. You influence the next generation of nurses by being a formal preceptor, or that nurse who everyone turns to because you are the best at starting IVs.
Think about the influencers in your life. We have all been influenced by someone else. How many times have you tried a new restaurant, attended a movie, or read a good book because someone recommended it? That is the power of influence. We listen to people that we trust and in whom we have the confidence that they can offer something to help us. It is the influence of others that we have to cultivate carefully. Who is in your circle of influence? Is it a mentor that can help you grow your business? Is it a friend who can introduce you to a potential referral partner? Is there someone you can mentor and help grow? The best relations are one of reciprocity. This isn’t a focus only taking, but of also giving and collaboration. You can take what you have learned from your mentors, integrate it into your life, and revise it to apply with your own signature flair. I can teach you how to do a head-to-toe assessment and so can someone else. But it may be the way he or she teaches the material may make all the difference. Maybe you make a phrase or set it to music to remember the steps. Maybe you dance it out and it is the physical aspect of doing the task in a particular sequence. Maybe it is putting into a colorful graphic. You get the picture. The key is to bring your unique self to the process. I remember when I wanted to remember the flow of blood through the heart, I didn’t “get it” until I drew a picture of the heart chambers, the vessels and color-coded it that made it stick. I had to take the material and make it my own. It was the same material available to everyone, I had to mold it in a way that made it stick for me. Comment below and share your biggest influences in your life.
Nursing News
Nurses are in the news and it’s not good. As a profession, health care workers often “vent” to each other and have engaged in some dark humor to balance the stress on the job. What happens when this tendency becomes public? Facebook groups, TikTok, YouTube are social media platforms where we seek entertainment and information. For every Dr. PimplePopper to NurseBlake, this content can provide a relief after a stressful day. I enjoy looking at nurse videos on Instagram or commenting in a Facebook group about a particular struggle. What we have seen however is a growing phenomenon beyond a general gripe session about Joint Commission. We have nurses and other health care professionals showing the darker side of healthcare and the public is not ready for it.
In the latest incident, a group of nurses made a TikTok video, “S—t Me Out” music parody, using hospital equipment in sexually suggestive ways. Unfortunately, these workers opted to perform in the hospital, with their name badges clearly visible, and in their hospital uniform. Many employers have social media policies and employees should review them before they post videos and especially if they film in patient care areas. Nurses were fired last year for posting their “icks” on TikTok mocking maternity patients. Two pediatric nurses shared their “icks”, mocking a teenage gunshot victim, who in the articles the nurses alleged he was “afraid of needles.”
I am all for humor. I enjoy watching a good comedian perform a sketch, yet, as professionals we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the patient. How would you feel if that was you in the bed or your mother in the bed? Would you want someone to minimize the pain your child was in with a serious injury? Would you want someone making fun of you when you are vulnerable and afraid? Think before you post. Maybe telling something over a glass a wine with your girlfriend about your day is not something you need to post for all the world to see. Context is key in this case. In an age where we shows dedicated to seeing people at their worse, and an algorithm that likes to promote controversial content, maybe it is time to step back and think about what we want to go viral.
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