Smart Nursing: How to Create a Positive Work Environment that Empowers and Retains Nurses

AORN Journal,  July, 2006  by Susan Jensen

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Smart Nursing: How to Create a Positive Work Environment that Empowers and Retains Nurses June Fabre 2005, 250 pages $32.95 softcover

This is an easy to read and understand book that emphasizes ensuring patient safety, reducing nurse turnover, and reaching health care solutions. Nurses, managers, administrators, and chief executive officers all can find valuable information in this book.

The author discusses the 1990s health care management staffing crisis that was caused by the exodus of skilled and experienced nurses lost to burn out or jobs with more satisfaction. This crisis added significantly to the difficulties health care organizations experienced in trying to staff their facilities adequately while being mindful of cost effectiveness.

According to the author,

   Smart nursing is a system of strategies
   that enable nurses to use their
   full professional capacity to deliver
   safe patient care in a variety of clinical
   settings; at the same time, it
   empowers managers to work with
   staff more effectively.

The book presents the author's model for creating a positive environment for nurses, patients, and administrators. She focuses on six building blocks for nurse recruitment and retention, including respect, simplicity, flexibility, integrity, professional culture, and communication. The author makes numerous suggestions about what individual nurses can do to create a positive workplace and includes inspiring success stories illustrating each suggestion.

The author also describes how the "smart nursing" system will benefit administrators and managed care providers. When implemented, the system empowers nurses to create positive, safe environments that enhance the six critical building blocks and lead to substantially improved nurse retention.

The end of each chapter includes tips for clinical nurses, managers, and educators. The book also includes a skills assessment sheet, a reading list, references, and an index.

As a perioperative nurse and manager for many years, the part of the book that I found most interesting was the analysis of the true cost of staff turnover and the financial advantage that can sometimes be gained by adding a staff person. The author points out the costs of advertising for open positions; interview time; sign-on bonuses; and orientation, training, and associated expenses, as well as the costs of premium pay to cover staffing holes and the administrative time it takes to manage short staffing caused by staff turnover. The financial advantages also can be seen in decreased litigation and sick time. She presents many compelling points that readers will want to bring to their own workplaces.

Experienced nurses will find the author's insights very familiar. Readers will get the feeling that they are in a discussion group with informed nurses. This book is an excellent read for nurses, administrators, and anyone else in the organization who has influence on the nursing environment.

This book is available from Springer Publishing Co, 11 W 42 St, New York, NY 10036.

SUSAN JENSEN

RN, BS, CNOR OR NURSE

GLEN FALLS HOSPITAL

GLEN FALLS, NY

COPYRIGHT 2006 Association of Operating Room Nurses, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning