Nursing Theory Meets Business Practice
Thursday April 1, 2004
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Quite the opposite. I believe by getting my MBA, I am following a path more nurses need to walk. Nursing schools need to design curriculum that introduces basic business concepts to nursing students. We are overwhelmed on a daily basis with news articles, surveys, and ads that remind us of the severity of the nursing shortage. The shortage is a main topic of discussion among CEOs, physicians, and legislators. But it is difficult for nurses, who rightfully measure job satisfaction by nurse-to-patient ratios and relationships with others, to understand supply and demand and balanced budget acts. Yet these issues have directly impacted our profession.
Driving Change
For many of us, the percentage of nurses in our organizations' boardrooms is very low, yet we make up the largest percentage of the healthcare employee population. I learned in one of my business classes that if the CEO was a marketing major in school, the marketing budget will most likely never be cut, and if the CEO was an information technology major, the IT budget will probably never be cut. Get the picture? How many of us can say our CEO is a nurse?
If your CEO isn't a nurse, what's the next best thing? We need to learn how to talk the talk - we need to understand the big picture and how it is impacting our profession. Our chief nursing officers can't do it alone. We have done a good job over the years of isolating ourselves from the world around us by concentrating on what we do best: nursing. However, we need to develop an understanding of how nursing is impacted by technology, Medicare and Medicaid, and the state of the economy. We can't just stomp our feet and throw up our hands in disgust any longer. We need a unified voice that is educated about what the issues are and has ideas about how to solve them.
Business and Nursing in the
Same Boat
By focusing on what we can do to lessen the impact of the nursing shortage or to attract nurses by using technology,
economic concepts, and marketing techniques, we can positively change the state of nursing, now and in the future. Instead of paying nurses more because they are incredibly overworked and stressed, why not examine productivity factors or technological innovations that can lighten the workload given the patient population? And, as our society becomes more service-oriented, examining successful business models within the context of our
profession may give us the answers we need.
If we don't have the resources or education that supports this type of global knowledge, no one will ever know our profession well enough to do it for us. Recently, in my area, a dedicated, intelligent, well-respected CNO was asked to resign from a large healthcare organization, I suspect because her values were not in line with the new CEO.
This woman worked her way up during the past two decades from a bedside nurse to CNO. She dedicated countless hours to making sure she was doing everything she could to ensure smooth operations. She was passionate about her nurses and nursing, and the nurses were secure in knowing that she would stand up for what was right. When she resigned, the nurses (and other professionals) of this organization were devastated; several resigned and many cried, yet no one stepped forward to contest this decision.
The challenge for nurses is to unify and speak up, think outside the box, and examine how our profession fits into the scheme of things. What solutions regarding the nursing shortage can we present to senior officers in a language they will understand? We need to introduce nursing theory to business policy and practice. We need to get past the taboo of business vs. nursing, because today, this is the world in which we live. Last, but most important, is the need for us to support each other. Until that time, the rest is in vain.
Rebecca Baute, RN, MBA, CMTE, is clinical director of the neonatal/pediatric transport team at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, where she is the patient services representative on the Medical Center Emergency Preparedness Committee.
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