Professional Growth

1. Are those outside activities well-pubilicized within your organization?

2. Are those outside activities scheduled at times that are convenient for your staff? and/or Does your institution help the nurse work those types of things into their schedules? Staff members who are drowning in a combination of work responsibilties and personal obligations rarely have the energy left over to invest in professional activities beyond those that are required for the job.

3. Does your workplace articulate an expectation that such activities/development are an expectation of the job?

4. Does the workplace follow-up on those expectations by building them into their career advancement requirements and reward systems?

5. Are the local offerings really pertinent to their jobs?

Hopefully, you see by now where I am going with this. I also work in the specialty of Nursing Professional Development and have for many years. My thinking has changed over the years. I used to think that nurses should do things simply "because they are the professional thing to do." I had a mentality of "If we offer it, they should come." But now I think that we need to do a better job of creating the environments and systems that both encourage and facilitate that sort of behavior.

Nurses are busy: we work and live in very complex environments and most of us struggle to juggle the competing demands placed upon us. We leaders need to do a better job of helping the nurses to do the things we want them to do -- help them by developing the environmental and system supports that move them in the direction we want them to go rather than expecting to dig deeper and go there simply because it meets an ideal that may or may not have much direct relationship to their daily lives.