Thinking Like a Nurse Futurist - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

“Change is the only law of life. Those who only look to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” John F. Kennedy

This week I am in Chicago attending the annual meeting of the World Future Society. This is a society with a mission to investigate how social, economic and technological developments are shaping the future. The goal of the conference is to help attendees (who come from throughout the world) learn how to better observe, understand and respond to social change and to exercise anticipatory thinking about the future. A colleague recently asked me why I attend these meetings and what does any of this have to do with nursing.

I gave her several examples of what I had learned from these meetings in the past. Ten years ago – social futurists were predicting the rise of the e-book. Six years ago, science futurists were discussing how nanotechnology would change healthcare and showed us the models for 3-D printers. Four years ago, demographer futurists were talking about the likelihood of significant global unrest because of the rising numbers of technologically connected young people.

Hearing the ideas of experts who study the future helps to inform my thinking in a very different way. Although there is a specific presentations that focus on healthcare, it is interesting to explore what is happening in technology development, the latest human scientific discoveries, global security concerns and the future of work. Having foresight about the future will make you more effective in your leadership strategic planning. So how can you develop your skills so you can think more like a nurse futurist. The following are some suggestions adapted from Craig Rispin:

Broaden the way that you scan your environment to look beyond healthcare and consider what is happening with resource availability, technology, demography and governments.
Become an avid reader of a broad range of information, news and updates from multiple disciplines.
Be a student of history but recognize that futurists are reverse historians.
Travel abroad and always think global instead of local when thinking about the future.
Think long-term (go out 10, 20 even 50 years) instead of short-term
Consider multiple scenarios in thinking about future possibilities.

In her book Think like a Futurist, Cecily Sommers makes the point that whatever we can imagine or create as we think about the future must be linked to something that already exists in our minds. The key idea then is to expand your ideas which will allow you to expand your connections. With a richer store of memories, we are able to imagine a vast range of possibilities and make more associative links that produce our best predictions about the future.

Anything you can do to expand your world using the tips above will help you to think about the future of nursing in a different way.

Read to Lead
Sommers, C. (2012). Think like a Futurist: Know what Changes, What Doesn’t and What’s Next. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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