The healthcare system is broken. The system is not sustainable. Many people will suffer. Many people are already suffering. Many people have been suffering for a long time. Much sleep has been lost, as nurses were moving toward the threat of a strike, negotiating with hospitals for safer care for patients, and safer work conditions for nurses. The two go hand in hand. When nurses feel safe, their patients will feel safe. When nurses are being cared for, patients will feel being cared for.
Nurses in the UK were striking last month, the first time in the 74 year history of the National Health Service. The number one issue for striking is a crisis of staffing. Nurse to patient ratios have been established, and well documented, but they are not enforced. This has been going on for years.
It has been well documented and changes have been attempted. With all the process improvement initiatives, consultants brought in, and new programs implemented, here we are, with nurses leaving the profession, and the nurses who do not want to leave, are on strike. The “unresignation”.
The system is broken. This current system must be made obsolete. With all the process improvement projects since the 1990’s, when hospitals brought in Edward Deming and Total Quality Management, the quality of patient care and services have continued to decline. Quoting Buckminster Fuller, also well known in the systems world, “ You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”.
Nurses are speaking out from their whole being. Their voices are being heard. Will their voice be listened to? The nurses do not want to quit! The nurses are speaking into what is needed in a system that will “allow”, give space and time to be, and from their being, to do what they do, practice nursing.
Nurse leaders will transform healthcare. The expert clinical nurses are the nursing leaders.
Leadership coaching, trauma informed leadership coaching, and individual and community trauma recovery coaching would be processes moving toward a “new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. Fighting the existing reality has proven to be fatiguing, and exhausting.
