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The challenge to stay current with the latest clinical practices has never been greater. Complex care plans, new models of care to learn, increased responsibilities—these are the realities faced by today’s nurse, including me. In an environment where the only constant is change, personal and patient success requires discovering and applying new evidence-based practices.
Preparing for the American Nurse Journal’s webinar, Challenging and Inspiring: Beyond Common Fall Prevention Practices, which aired June 20, 2024, brought this concept home. Traditionally, all nurses are educated to practice universal approaches to fall prevention. So how and when do we learn when those approaches become outdated? And when we learn new approaches, how do we begin to apply them, especially if our organizations continue using the older approaches?
During the webinar content development, I realized that I needed to be humble about admitting that common processes in place today need to change and that we must move quickly to embed new, best practices. Being humble allows us to own what we know and what we don’t know. Being strategic about humbleness provides us with the opportunity to think more broadly as a team so that we learn together and achieve patient care success together.
Nurses are scientists at heart, objectively assessing a clinical situation and identifying a well-reasoned course of action in the best interest of the patient. Understanding the urgency for applying the best practices in each of these situations teaches even the most experienced, confident nurse to practice strategic humility.
When we carry out strategic humility in any scenario, we reinforce for us personally, and for our team members more broadly, what we don’t know. This in turn can stimulate an appetite for further learning. Use of the term “strategic” results from a decision to use learning as a tool for progress and characterizes confident, humble nurses. Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, said, “The awareness of one’s limitations grows exponentially with one’s knowledge.”
Clinical practice excellence requires knowledge and expertise. I propose that nurses who add strategic humility to their many traits will make a difference, continue to keep the patient at the center of their care, and promote the learning environment vital to positive outcomes.
Lillee Gelinas, DNP, RN, CPPS, FAAN
Editor-in-Chief
American Nurse Journal. 2024; 19(8). Doi: 10.51256/ANJ082404
