Advocacy

Recent Actions

Action

Check out this article, which features Maine Med nurses fighting for safe staffing levels, additional time for breaks, not prioritizing travel nurse hours over permanent staff, and more! So far they have completed over 20 bargaining sessions. Some changes have been made but they continue to fight until all issues are addressed that will lead to a higher level of patient safety and better nurse retention rates. Maine Medical Center has recently released a statement saying that they are working on a contract that is fair to nurses and will not stop until resolution has been made (Popp, 2022).

when addressing the institution, several nurses have reported these factors that reduce speaking up behaviors...

Barriers

- Perceived effectiveness

Lack of response and impact, lack of managerial support, lack of transparency and follow up

- Motivation

Feeling helpless, intimidated, feeling of an annoyance

- Individual factors

Distracted, prior repercussions, prior experiences with disrespect, low confidence, fear of damaging relationships

-Tools

Lack of tools provided to help communicate concerns

- General contextual factors

Rushed, difficult reporting process, lack of established procedures about conflict resolution

- Perceived Safety

Culture of blame, fear of appearing incompetent, prior negative outcomes

-Measurement

Lack of analysis of voiced concerns

(Institute For Safe Medication Practices, 2019)

I want to advocate for safe nurse-patient ratios within my hospital, what should I do?

Future Plans

- Unify your voice/ Gather resources

* Get others involved --> Fellow colleagues, get support from organizations aimed at assisting nurses in policy change (Association of Public Health Nurses, 2022)

* Build numbers outside the hospital --> Attend school board meetings, public meetings with county officials, start a social media campaign, construct gatherings with like minded members who want to tell the story (Marymount University, n.d.)

- File patient safety concerns with The Joint Commission (https://apps.jointcommission.org/QMSInternet/IncidentEntry.aspx?_ga=2.21946235.1330488776.1651431594-1542295855.1651431594)

- Join a committee within the hospital. Providence Hospital near our college has an "Ethical Committee" that is ran by nurses, physicians, social workers and administrators that help develop policies around ethical and moral concerns. They also hold care conferences to guide decision making (Ethics, 2022)

-Find the top dog --> Usually this is the board of directors, find out how to attend policy meetings and come prepared with supporting data containing all resources above!

We can promote speaking up behaviors by...

But what about those obstacles we talked about earlier?

Overcoming Obstacles

- Showing leadership - encourage others to use their voice by modeling this behavior

- Rally up --> you're not alone!

- Come with supportive data to strengthen the risk of perceived risk of patient harm

- Come with ideas on what you would like to see, not just what is currently not working

- Recommend having speaking up included in performance reviews

- Formulate a speaking up system (SBAR, rubric) so communication is structured

- Ask for follow-up/analysis updates

- Utilize your resources (Like the ones of the previous page), weighting reasoning with support from other organizations can help bring areas of concern to the next level

(Institute For Safe Medication Practices, 2019).

References

Reference

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