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STTI Conference Reflections

I just arrived home from the Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) conference in Indianapolis about creating healthy work environments.  It was a full day of driving there and back from Ontario but well worth the journey!   Everyone I met was so positive and inspiring – I wish we could spread this positive energy to the four corners of the earth and remind our colleagues that healthy workplaces are possible.  Are there barriers?  For sure.  But without a vision and passion for change, we are going to stay where we are, which unfortunately isn’t always  ideal.

Some of the highlights of the conference for me were listening to the panel discussion that kickstarted the conference on Friday morning, hearing Dr. Cindy Clarke speak later that day, and having a discussion about some of the challenges of having an academic career in nursing.

I had a real “light bulb” moment on Saturday when we were discussing the importance of recruiting and retaining doctoral-prepared nurses in academic positions and the value of  staying current in our clinical practice in addition to balancing the demands of teaching, research, and service while pursing tenure.

It dawned on me that the academy was not built with practice disciplines in mind, therefore clinical practice is not valued at many institutions in the same way as the traditional tripod of responsibilities (i.e. teaching, research, and service).   How can we be expected to prepare undergraduate students to become professional nurses if we are not up to date on our nursing skills and current best practices?  On the other hand, how can we possibly become and remain experts in all domains and still have a life?!    I’ll be the first to admit that I work 50-60 hours/week on research and schoolwork and the remainder of my time is spent with my son, working out, squeezing in other activities (like writing and grocery shopping) and sleeping.

Although I love my job as a staff nurse I am dreading going back to work in September when my maternity leave ends.   I know from experience that spreading yourself too thin takes a toll on my body and my mental health.  Not to mention that when quantity of activities increases past a manageable level, quality often suffers.   Having to choose between spending time with my son (which I will never get back) and running around like a crazy person trying to build my CV and establish my career is not easy.   I care deeply about nursing and I want to contribute to our profession in a meaningful way.  I also love my son and cherish all the time we have together.

Women already face enough challenges pursuing academic careers without the added obstacles of pursing one in nursing.  How can we expect nurses to give up their high-paying (and often unionized) staff nursing jobs to go back to school and still support their families?  Moreover, how can we expect nurses to complete their doctoral work while teaching or working full-time and often working the second shift at home as a mom and house manager?   Yet, so many do.   If we are going to successfully recruit and retain nursing faculty, we need to be more supportive of talented nurses who want to become educators and researchers.  We need to recognize and appreciate that as individuals we cannot and need not be experts in everything.  Every nurse has different gifts and strengths to offer that bring a wealth of knowledge and ways of being that enrich our profession.

For me, valuing, respecting, and embracing diversity is fundamental to creating a healthy profession and a healthy work environment.  Just because I have a passion for research and teaching and a few extra letters next to my name doesn’t mean I don’t admire and value the experience and expertise of seasoned staff nurses.  It would be completely ignorant of me to think that I know more or better than others; I simply know differently.  I would be gravely mistaken if I thought that what others have to offer makes me “less than”.  I can only hope that my colleagues in practice embrace the same attitude: I might be pursing an academic career but I am still a “real” nurse.

Thankfully, my nurse colleagues in academia have been so supportive and encouraging!   I have so much to learn and a long way to go but I am inspired by the courage, wisdom, and strength of the nurses who have led the way before me.   I am so fortunate to be surrounded by such wonderful scholars and nursing leaders.   Together we are all going to accomplish so much!

Why I am still in school…

For my first post, I thought I would share with you a little bit about what inspired me to pursue a career in nursing and academics.  

My career journey hasn’t exactly been straight forward.  When I was five years old I dreamed of being an author when I grew up.  My friend Meaghan and I would make up stories in little handmade notebooks and her father would type them up on his fancy typewriter, handing us back our “published” stories on crisp white paper.  Then we would make the illustrations by hand and use construction paper to make front and back covers. Oh how I loved making up stories!  

I was by all accounts a very shy, introverted child and spent most of my time reading.  Thankfully this has served me well in graduate school, as I have become quite a fast reader because I’ve done so much of it.  At any rate, I have always enjoyed the world of ideas and learning new things.  I am not the brightest star in the sky by any means, but I do tend to approach life with curiosity and lots of questions.  

As a naive 18-year-old from a small town in Nova Scotia I came to Western to study English literature.  Although I adored studying literature and writing, I wasn’t confident that I would be able to make it as a writer so I took a year off mid-way through and ended up at Acadia University where I completed a kinesiology degree.  It was here that one of my professors approached me to do an honours thesis project with him in exercise physiology.  I jumped at the chance and ended up creating a field test for athletes to assess fatigue and overtraining.  Through this experience I learned how to conduct research from start to finish and had so much fun doing it that I applied to do a master’s degree at Western, in hopes of doing my PhD.  

It is also worth mentioning that I had also applied to the University of Calgary’s accelerated nursing program and was accepted.  I remember telling my mom that I was thinking about becoming a nurse and then pursing a career in nursing research.  As it turns out I ended up doing this anyway but with an MSc in kinesiology and then a degree in nursing.  In the long run, I think this has served me well because I have such a rich background in health sciences to bring to bear on my work.  I have worked as a personal trainer and now work as a nurse on a geriatric rehabilitation unit which is the cat’s meow as far as I’m concerned!  I love working with older adults and the staff on my unit are so knowledgeable and supportive.   Some days I can’t believe that I get paid to do a job that I love so much.

I realize this is becoming a really long post, but I think it helps to get a bit of background on who I am and what inspires me to do the work that I am pursing.

My main motivation is that I care about about people and envision a society where people have the means to be healthy and happy, to experience friendship and community, and live good lives.  It saddens me that there is so much suffering, poverty, and disease in our own backyards and that people face so many barriers to being healthy and happy.  In particular, it doesn’t make sense to me that many of our health care providers are stressed out, unhealthy, and unhappy in their jobs.  We spend a tremendous amount of our life energy at work and it can have a huge impact on our mental and physical health.  How can we expect patients to be taken care of if we aren’t taking care of ourselves?  Thus, my research area of interest is examining how we can create healthy work environments that contribute to nurses’ health and wellbeing, as well as trying to understand how that affect outcomes for patients, health care organizations, and the health care system as a whole.

While I love my job as a nurse, I find research exciting and see the potential it has for creating new evidence to inform best practices and make our health care system better.  I hope that one day I can look back on my career and know that I made a valuable contribution with what I had to offer. I genuinely want to leave the world a better place for having had me in it. And that is why I have just completed my 12th year of university.