What is an Empowered Nurse?

According to the dictionary, a person is empowered if they have the authority or power to do something.  You might call to mind some of the famous people who were empowered, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. or Florence Nightingale; even Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela.  King’s peace movement spurred integration.  Nightingale founded the modern nursing school while Mandela and Gandhi used their power to do good things in the world!

However, you don’t need to create world change to be empowered.  I believe that nurses have the answers to solve the issues in healthcare.  They know how to solve problems to improve the flow of patient care, to improve systems in the hospital and provide solutions to patient problems.

Only as children were we fully and completely able to express ourselves.  When we cried, we got attention.  When we laughed, the adults around us laughed with us.  And when something bothered us, we spoke freely.  Somehow, we were not afraid of rejection at that time.

Somewhere along the line, when we became adults, we learned that it was not acceptable to speak our mind.  And so we don’t.

However, the problem is that without speaking our mind we are not fully self-expressed.  Keeping things inside can eat away at us and even can cause illness.  More so, all the great ideas of nurses would never come out and they would never be implemented.

Think how it would have been had Martin Luther King did not speak his mind?  We probably would be still living in a segregated society.  If Florence Nightingale did not speak her mind, we probably would not even be practicing nursing.  Had Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela never spoken their minds, India might still be under British rule and the racial segregation of apartheid could still exist in South Africa.

If you are not sharing your ideas to improve our profession, then all your good ideas and your solutions will never be implemented.  The problems still will exist, work will be harder for the other nurses, the systems won’t flow as smoothly and the patients won’t get as good professional care if your ideas are not implemented.

So, stand in your power!  Be an empowered nurse!  Speak your mind to make the changes so that everyone can benefit.