Advice from the front lines: create your own better future!

The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself, former Nova Scotia nurse manager Barb Fry advised delegates at the final session of UNA’s 35^th annual general meeting today.

“We can no longer eat our young and terrorize each other,” the reformed “workplace queen” told the AGM.

And the way to solve that problem, she explained, is to undergo a self-imposed attitude adjustment – “choose your attitude wisely, it’s your right to choose.”

Fry noted that a number of harmful (and voluntarily adopted) workplace attitude archetypes – including the aforementioned “workplace queens,” plus their princesses, in addition to rumour mongers, patient traders and eye rollers – continue to current problems in the nursing profession.

Her prescription for their malign influence in the workplace: “Live your standards and your code of ethics. Be accountable responsible for creating healthy workplace relationships.”

Eye rollers? “That look? It’s a choice! You can choose not to look like that. No more eyeball rolling!”

Patient switching? “The relationship with the patient is the essence of professional nursing. It’s my job (as a nurse) to deal with whatever comes my way.”

The answer to workplace bullies like the queens and their princesses: “Don’t confront. Have a conversation. Reclaim your professional nursing power.”

Fry’s conclusion: “Toxic behaviours deprofessionalize nursing. We cannot continue working this way any longer.”

Her prescription for fixing the situation in Alberta health care workplaces boiled down to three letters we all know well: U.N.A.

-       “Unify and strengthen your nursing practice through mutual respect, collaboration and excellence in all you do.”

-       “Never regret the path you chose to be a nurse.”

-       “Act now to reclaim the vanishing art of professional nursing.”

In other words, if the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself, she asked, “What are you waiting for?”