I was recently interviewed for an article about improving strategic thinking in nursing leadership. A key element to becoming more strategic is a willingness to challenge one’s paradigms. Changing one’s paradigm takes work. Paradigms are deeply ingrained mental frameworks that shape our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. They are the lens we use to view nursing practice. When our paradigms are threatened, our reaction can be pretty visceral.
Shifting paradigms requires conscious effort and a commitment to personal transformation. A paradigm shift occurs when a person, group, or organization encounters new information that significantly alters their thoughts and actions. Moving on to a new stage is a massive feat. It requires courage to abandon old certainties and experiment with a new worldview. Several leaders, such as those below, are working hard to change their perspectives:
A nurse leader recently told me she was shifting her paradigm about care delivery. She realized that although she had always championed primary nursing, her staff were not delivering care using the foundational principles of that model. There needed to be more continuity, commitment, or even accountability. To staff her primary care delivery model, 80% of her nurses now had less than two years of experience, impacting quality. She noted, “I am advocating for something that is not happening and may never be possible again.”
Another leader talked with me about her resistance to the role of technology in care. She noted, “I believed using a robot would dehumanize our care delivery. I was shocked to see how much our patients and staff loved the robot – maybe I was delusional about how hands-on some of our care is.”
A manager worried about adding virtual nurses to the team and how it would impact the nurse-patient relationship. “I thought patients (and staff) would see these virtual nurses as intrusive on their privacy, but it is quite the opposite. Our patients and nurses feel safer with another set of eyes – the idea of privacy violation has never been raised by patients, family, or staff. This was my paradigm. I thought back to the relationship I tried to establish with patients and superimposed it onto a different environment.
A CNO told me that she is struggling with the lack of organizational loyalty among young Generation Z nurses. “It really bothers me that many of our new graduates are very detached and don’t buy into the strong culture we once had. Yet on the flip side, I see the same thing happening with my own kids. They have little loyalty to their employers and tell me the world has changed. They are distrustful because they now see employers laying staff off with very little notice in highly impersonal ways such as an email.”
Gallup researchers note that one of the first steps to shifting your paradigm is acknowledging that the current environment is different and there is no going back. When something changes, don’t get stuck thinking about how things used to be — focus on how things are now, and what you can do to make the most of the new situation. Paradigms are simply mindsets—the way we think about and view the world around us. By focusing on finding solutions, we open ourselves up to possibilities instead of getting bogged down in negativity.
© emergingrnleader.com 2024
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