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Blog spotlight: Improving nursing culture in your organization

Nurse Leader Weekly, May 3, 2010

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Nursing culture is shaped by many internal factors, including barriers such as poor communication between leaders and frontline nurses or a lack of respect from medical staff. If nurses are not well respected by their colleagues on the medical staff, then how do you think you can create a culture of excellence?

Leadership plays a critical role in affecting culture throughout the organization. As a leader, it is important to create an environment conducive to a culture that is professional, reaches excellence, has mutual respect, and inspires values.

Here are the beginning steps to help change the culture in your organization.

Step I: Define your current nursing culture (i.e., positives and negatives.) What are things that you like and dislike about the nursing culture in your organization? What are the things that you need to change? What are the barriers that will block change?

Step II: Identify the changes needed to enhance professional culture. Some changes take time, but there may be policies or changes in practice that can occur immediately. Don’t forget to recognize and praise changes made throughout the year. Have you ever looked back and wondered, ‘What did we accomplish this year?’ Keep a log of all the changes made in nursing for the year, and then communicate this to your nurses.

To read the remaining steps, and let us know what you think, click here.

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