Area of expertise: Leadership, health policy, policy advocacy, international nursing policy, clinician well-being, and optimizing technology to improve practice and the work environment
Being an activist in nursing marks my beliefs about being a professional. It has always been important to speak out whether as a student, or staff nurse, or leader in a professional association or executive in a healthcare delivery organization. Having been a staff nurse, clinical nurse specialist, CNO, COO, and now a Dean, I consider myself fortunate to have had many experiences leading organizations and nurses to achieve stellar outcomes and serve diverse constituencies. As an academic medical center executive, my career focused on improving quality and safety of services as well as the work environment for all staff. As a national and international leader, my passion is to grow nursing's influence on healthcare policy and advance the role and visibility of nurses. Serving as President of the American Nurses Association for four and a half years has been my greatest honor to represent the interest of our nation's 4 million RNs.
Question:
1. What are the significant professional milestones in your career journey?
PFC: As a nursing student, I was elected president of the National Student Nurses Association, which set my course for lifelong involvement in nursing organizations serving in leadership positions at every level. At each progressive stage of acquiring more education-starting as a diploma graduate-I actively pursued positions with greater autonomy and opportunity to be involved in decision-making. That included a role as a clinical nurse specialist influencing the learning of nurses caring for critical care patients and being involved in the planning of care decisions affecting patients and families. Serving in a number of executive roles in academic medical centers, I was responsible for nursing as well as most other clinical disciplines and operations, which allowed me to lead during difficult times with resource constraints, growing emphasis on quality, the boom in technology, and waves of uncertainty in healthcare policy in the United States.
2. How have you seen the specialty of NPD grow/evolve/change during your career?
PFC: Nurses have long embraced the notion of being lifelong learners. As the generation of knowledge and the sheer volume of information has exploded, nursing professional development has become an essential framework for ensuring a systematic approach to career progression, ongoing education, cultivation of leadership skills and acumen, and guiding nurses to meet current expectations of evidence-based practice, compliance, and continuous improvement of outcomes. NPD specialists provide structure through program management and unique roles that support practice and collaboration. The role has also been key to increasing rigor around continuing education that adds value and meets the needs of learners. Ultimately, the NPD specialist supports busy clinicians and their organizations to address professional practice gaps and build skills across the nursing staff and leaders.
3. From your perspective, what do you see as significant trends or gaps in nursing practice that NPD practitioners could address?
PFC: The healthy work environment is proving to be essential for effective practice, meeting desired outcomes and bringing joy to practice. NPD practitioners are able to observe from the balcony and see how organizations are addressing these needs (or not) and influence not only education but setting of expectations, behaviors, and values that support the workforce and their practice. Fundamental to this is teaching teams how to function in collaboration and how to learn together. We talk about team work but rarely prepare individuals to understand the dynamics and science behind effective interactions.
Another area important today includes building an environment of inclusive excellence-moving beyond the typical focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion and really building skills and addressing unconscious bias as well as supporting individuals through difficult situations.
A continuing need is stimulating nurses' advocacy whether that's for local changes in practice, or policy changes, both large and small, or looking out for the welfare of the staff. Nurses need help engaging with their leaders to express their concerns and offer constructive solutions.
4. What insights can you share related to the value of NPD practitioners in healthcare organizations now and in the future?
PFC: Just as clinical expertise has become specialized, so has that of nurses we want to lead and support organizational efforts to increase knowledge application and improve care. NPD practitioners are able to offer experiential learning and facilitate a number of diverse educational events. One of the most valuable contributions is reflecting on the changes that drive the need to revise approaches to education-both content and techniques-and providing critical evaluation data that inform new methods or offerings needed for organizations to remain nimble and relevant.
5. What advice do you have for NPD practitioners in the context of today's health care and learning environments?
PFC: The work of NPD practitioners must align with an organization's goals and priorities, which might range from improving outcomes in quality, turnover, work environment, leadership capacity, innovation or collaboration, or all of the above. The NPD practitioner can help "connect the dots" on many of the aspects of addressing such areas and looking for ways to synchronize efforts across an organization that will eliminate the silos we often perpetuate in practice as well as learning environments. Similarly, being familiar with the pain points in an organization, perhaps staffing or pressure on productivity, and helping adjust the education and mandatory learning requirements to engender better staff engagement can lead to much greater respect for the NPD role. Be that "fly on the wall" and share your observations about the culture of the organization and how you think professional development can be more meaningful to everyone.