My early nursing career offered me a variety of care areas and work settings. Shortly after graduating with my BSN, I began my nursing career in Labor & Delivery at a hospital in downtown Omaha. While not as notorious as some other inner-city facilities in the country, it was a reality check and an often-stressful setting for a ‘farm-girl’ from rural Nebraska. My eyes were quickly opened by the cases that we saw in this trauma center caring for a diverse population.

When the American Nurses’ Association announced the theme for National Nurses’ Week 2020 as ‘The Year of the Nurse and the Nurse Midwife’ no one could have anticipated how true that tagline would become. As the COVID-19 virus expanded into a pandemic causing millions, of often critically ill, highly contagious patients to descend on hospitals and other healthcare facilities, nurses around the world stepped up as they always do.

If you’ve worked in healthcare for any length of time you’ve probably heard the saying “no margin, no mission.” As a nursing leader, I had to learn terms like EBIDA, productive versus non-productive hours, fixed assets, expense variances, and the intricacies of tax accountability for regular payroll versus bonus hours.

One of the realities of life is that we are constantly giving and receiving feedback. Sometimes feedback is formal, such as annual performance reviews or meetings with supervisors or faculty. Other times it is as casual as a reassuring smile from a colleague or mentor when mastering a new task or comforting another. How we process and apply feedback is influenced by many things. Comments or feedback might take the mind to a similar stressful experience in the past or to a pleasant memory surrounding a success.