By Linda Q. Everett, PhD, RN, FAAN
Clarian Health Executive Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive

Linda Q. Everett

As a child, I learned early the meaning of power, the complexities of politics and the art of persuasion. I was raised in an Irish Catholic family in an ethnic part of Columbus, Ohio, called German Village. It was a challenging Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The use of power, politics and persuasion was more than a theme. It was a way of life. As I matured, it was through power, politics and persuasion that I learned to lift my voice and acquire the resources I needed to be educated, engaged and energized about my passion.

That passion became nursing; and later, that passion became nursing leadership.

Today, as the executive vice president and chief nursing executive at Clarian Health and as president of the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE), I believe even more passionately than ever that nursing leaders must assert a collective voice and articulate the values and contributions made by professional nurses to health care and the work environment.

Together, we face a collection of challenges: issues of patient safety and quality of care; the growing demand for greater public access to health care; for transparency in reporting of clinical outcomes; growing numbers of uninsured; and overwhelming workforce issues evidenced by RN vacancy rates in all care settings.

As nursing leaders (and as nurses) we cannot sit back and take a "Not on my watch" position on these issues. Together, we must lift our voices with the conviction that solutions must be found "on our watch."

We must lift up our voices together, and using our power, politics and persuasion, secure safe and quality patient care for those we serve while providing for healthful practice environments for our peers and colleagues.

The patient care delivery model of the future will look very different from today; by the year 2010, we won’t have enough health care workers to deliver care using the same models we use today.

That means we must act now to define the work of the future, the roles needed to do that work, and then the education that is required to create the person to fill the role of the future.

Dramatic change and revolutionary thinking are required here. And we can’t wait until we have all the answers. We must begin to experiment and act now.

That work will require us to lift the voice of nursing to a different level. We must do a better job of conveying to the public the true work and value of nursing.

Yes, we are a caring profession – few people would dispute this. But we also are competent professionals. We must educate, engage and energize the public about the contributions that nurses make to health care.

We also must lift our voices to a level of legislative policy-making that will garner the awareness and resources required for the provision of safe and high-quality patient care and healthful practice environments.

This work must be done at the local, state and federal levels and in partnership with other members of the nursing community, other disciplines, regulators and policy makers. It is essential that we maintain both forward momentum of these partnerships and the strength of our collective purpose.

I’m proud to say that work is already underway at Clarian Health. Learn more about it (and us) and our nursing career opportunities by navigating around this site and by visiting www.ACallToChange.org/nursing. 

Join us as we work to lift the voice of nursing.