Nurses need to seize power they have, says AARN AGM keynote speaker

Despite their impressive numbers and powerful knowledge about the problems in health care, nurses have a quiet voice in the public arena, says Mary Ferguson-Pare, an expert in nursing leadership issues.

"Although nurses comprise the largest number of health care workers, they are often the voice heard the least," says Ferguson-Pare. "There is a tremendous amount of power in nursing, but the expression of power does not come forward."

She believes the profession has been weakened by nurses losing their jobs due to health care cutbacks and leaving nursing altogether because conditions for delivering care have become unbearable. "Nurses have been voting with their feet and leaving (nursing) when they could have stood for the profession."

Ferguson-Pare, vice-president of professional affairs, human resources and organizational development at Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre, will be discussing her research into nursing leadership issues during her keynote address at the AARN annual general meeting May 6.

Lack of authority in health care organizations, a resistance to broader educational preparation for nurses and an anti-intellectual bias in nursing are the biggest barriers to nurses asserting more power over the way they practice, says Ferguson-Pare.

She points out that despite a national will to have all registered nurses enter the profession with a bachelor's degree by the year 2000, only a few provinces are making it a reality New nursing graduates entering the profession with a university education often find themselves in a workplace that doesn't encourage a practice of inquiry, research and innovation they've been educated for.

"In order to encourage nursing research, we need to have a spirit of inquiry," says Ferguson-Pare. "We need to encourage nurses who are prepared to ask the question: `why do we do this, wouldn't it be better for the patients if it was done this way?' "

Although the challenges of encouraging nurses to assert power and assume leadership are daunting, Ferguson-Pare doesn't believe the situation is hopeless. "There is leadership at many levels and it needs to come from everywhere nurses practice." She indicates that nursing unions and professional associations need to find a common purpose to encourage leadership.

Her study of nursing leadership within a 500-bed teaching hospital found that even in a stressful, hostile environment, front-line managers can create a positive environment by supporting their nurses to provide care in the way they had been educated. She found the most successful nursing managers were able to promote autonomous nursing practice within a collaborative, team approach to patient care.

Ferguson-Pare describes these leaders as having a "human quality of caring for not only patients but staff." The managers governed their staff according to the vision and mission of the hospital but they also found ways to support their individual staff in how they share in the decisions and responsibilities of caring for patients.

Nursing, says Ferguson-Pare, has a good future. "Nurses are inseparably linked with the public and the family; nursing science is a holistic one. With the move towards a health system based on wellness and holistic practice, nurses are well positioned to fit in."

Mary Ferguson-Pare, vice-president of professional affairs, human resources and organizational development at Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre will address leadership issues in nurses as the keynote speaker at the AARN annual general meeting May 6, 1999. An abstract of her recent research, Nursing Leadership and Autonomous Professional Practice of Registered Nurses, appears in the May/June 1999 issue of the Canadian Journal of Nursing Administration.

Copyright Alberta Association of Registered Nurses Mar/Apr 1999
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