Category: Nursing Articles

As the impact of COVID-19 on hospitals across the U.S. continues to escalate, the minds and hearts of the Catalyst Learning team are with you and your organization who are providing an invaluable service to your communities as the frontline of patient care. Our office in Louisville, Kentucky has implemented social distancing protocols recommended by […]

In a busy and stressful nursing unit, the first-level supervisor nurse is very important. The Charge Nurse is responsible for care delivery and ensuring procedures are running smoothly. They look for outcomes, think about success indicators, and are responsible for a team. Clinical knowledge alone is not enough for a nurse to fulfill this role.…

No one said nursing was easy. There are days when your nurses will be stressed out and possibly feel hesitant about their own abilities. Nurses may ask themselves “Is this something I can handle?” or “Can I really do this my entire career?” New nurses straight out of school may acknowledge that they have the…

CNOs have a stressful role – it is tough being the biggest advocate for nurses in a healthcare organization, when up to 35% of the staff are nurses. There is a lot at stake and a lot of associates to lead. CNOs are responsible for quality, safety, patient satisfaction, labor, regulatory, compliance, budgets and the…

Transformational leadership is a key ingredient in establishing a nursing environment that achieves Magnet designation. Gradually, a transformational mindset should take root in the organization and become even stronger as other leaders adopt this way of thinking. Nurses in charge need to be developed, directed, and empowered to find the best way to accomplish the…

If 2020 has taught us anything about the nursing profession, it’s that nurses have to be leaders for our country to make it through a pandemic. While often called “soft skills” of leadership, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that the hardest skills for nurses to master are navigating conflict, promoting resilience, engaging a team,…

What is the best way to help an employee learn professional skills? Is it through sitting in a classroom with a lecturing “trainer?” How about having employees sit through an hour-long slide show with a speaker describing all the new trends with statistics to back it up? While both of these present their own unique…

Every nurse early in their career has had a Charge RN they did not want to work under on a shift. Ineffective shift leaders may lead “reactive” instead of proactive, be pessimistic, unpredictable, poor under stress, or may even find it challenging to relate to other nurses viewpoint. This is why nurse leaders with high…

What is employee engagement? Gallup defines it as the level of commitment, passion and loyalty a worker has towards their work and their organization. CNOs can take action to drive nurse engagement; in fact Magnet hospitals are even graded on engagement metrics like leadership access/responsiveness and RN to RN teamwork and collaboration. To help a…

Nurses make up the largest employee category in U.S. health systems. More than ever, healthcare leaders are advocating for the need to retain confident nurses who can lead, and be ready for change and complexities in managing patient populations. Nurses are on the front line of patient care and are crucial for advancing health. When…