October is National Bully Prevention month. While the world focuses on how to stop bullying in schools, communities, and of course, the workplace, last year I decide to shift my focus a bit. As the Founder of the Healthy Workforce Institute, my goal is to eradicating bad behavior in healthcare. After all, the way the healthcare team treats each other is just as important as the care they provide. When disruptive behaviors go unaddressed, bad things…

Can you believe that another year is almost over?!? The older I get, the faster the years seem to fly by. It seems like just yesterday I was a young adult venturing out to my first day of being a real nurse. Thirty four years later (yikes!), I sit here at my desk writing to you and sharing ways to strengthen your professional practice. Each year in between has given me insight and experiences, both good…

Nurse fatigue and burnout are huge problems. So many nurses start their careers with optimism, enthusiasm and an overwhelming feeling of joy but then get bogged down with the realities of the day-to-day challenges of taking care of strangers in increasingly complex environments. The repeated feelings of stress and the inability to consistently care for patients the way we know they need to be cared for can slowly erode our “happy happy joy joy” emotions –…

Nurse fatigue is getting a lot of attention lately. Why? It’s because studies show that when nurses get burned out – individual nurses, the nursing profession, health care organizations and ultimately patients SUFFER! Of course they do! When nurse don’t feel good about the work they do, it impacts their ability to engage in providing high quality, effective and safe patient care. Nurse fatigue has a negative effect on work relationships and our ability to communicate…

Do you work with someone who when she speaks, every word coming out of her mouth is gloom and doom? Let’s say you’re in a good mood. La la la…You walk into the break room and there she is.  You find yourself face to face with a creature so vile she can turn the happiest occasions, someone’s greatest accomplishments and all good moods into dust! Yep. She is the Energy Vampire. How do you know? Because…