“Come to the edge, he said.
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge, he said.
They came.
He pushed them….….and they fell several meters onto a rock sustaining multiple fractures and facial lacerations.”
:: Apologies to Guillaume Apollinaire (French Poet and Critic 1880–1918)::
What our profession needs now more than ever before are leaders like you.
Do not underestimate your ability to change the status quo.
Do not undervalue your personal strengths or values as ineffective, or think that those very skills of compassion, and empathy and gumption that you have been blessed with are too soft to engage any forces of oppression or misguidance.
All the time you hear nurses talk of how we eat our own. But even worse, is how we eat ourselves.
Cynicism, poor self-esteem, negativity and apathy are our own brittle bullies that bleed our confidence and smother our voice.
The actuality of it all is that you have the qualities to be a strong agent of change.
Real leadership isn’t about being at the top or about being at the front, it is about being at the heart.
So come to the edge. Start talking about what is wrong. With your unit, your hospital, your profession.
Question everything. Value everyone.
Why do we do it this way? What does everyone else have to offer?
How do we get from where we are….to where we need to be?
Why do we fear the edge?
YOU have the ability to motivate and to inspire. With your actions and your words.
To nudge at the current inertia, to gather the creative energies of your colleagues, to push, to lever, until the whole thing gets a little momentum up.
There is no time to waste.
Come to the edge, she said.
They said: We are too busy.
We are too undervalued.
We are too old.
We are too junior.
We are too insignificant.
Come to the edge, she said.
They came.
And they saw there was no edge after all. Just a whole lot of people moving in the same direction.
Ian this post is super inspirational.
I notice that nurses at work gets a little frustrated with nurses that come to the edge. Nurses that tend to highlight things that are not working and pushing for improvement gets labeled as being ‘the know it alls’, arrogant, hard to please, fault finders and just generally unapproachable .
What people do not understand is that if they for one moment can look past these perceptions, because that is what they are, they will find nurses who are passionate and purpose driven. These nurses want to see nursing excellence and nurses that genuinely care for patients and for each other.
Thank you for this, I especially liked the part of being at the heart. So true. Wish I could have a chat with you, your content on this blog is so rich.
Ian, again you inspire me.
When I was thinking about nursing as a career change your writing convinced me. Now, as RN3 there have been so many shifts where my enthusiasm and energy were lost, but your writing reminded me that not all nurses are insular, nasty and disinterested in both patients and our profession. After a week of colleagues texting whilst “delivering care” and deriding doctors by name in front of patients, you remind me again that their version of nursing does not have to dominate! I’ll go back on Monday and keep doing my best. Don’t stop writing for us all please!
Christopher Logue
Thank you. I needed to hear this.