New Beginning

The Beginning

How I Started to Slowly Get Into Writing

Hi, my name is Christina White RN, RNC-NIC, BSN, MBA. I honestly hate putting all those letters after my name and generally, I don’t bother. I’m doing it here so that you all know I have some experience behind me. I have worked as a nurse for 17 years. My main nursing career has been in the NICU. I have also done pediatric home care, I was a nurse at a phase 1 drug testing facility, I worked as a clinical manager for a home care company, I did some travel nursing, and I currently work as an assistant manager for a top 10 nationally ranked NICU. I just finished my MBA last month (September 2024).

I’m so excited to start this new phase in my career. I have wanted to write for a long time and now is the time I will start. This is all new to me so I am sure I will stumble along the way, but that is how we all learn, so I’m just going to embrace it as it comes. 

Many people know that middle management is a beast. It is a hard place to be, you are responsible for many people and many tasks, yet you don’t have the authority to do much without permission from those above you. Then add working the night shift, this adds a whole other layer to the complexity of being in middle management. As I grow in my job, I am continually amazed at how slow it is to get things accomplished. And how many different departments a project needs to go through. It becomes very discouraging since we, as assistant managers, are the ones that have to explain to the frontline staff that things should be happening, but we can’t seem to get them to move forward with all the “red tape” that we have to push against. I have been doing this job for 3yrs now and even though there have been extenuating circumstances, so much that should have been done and could have been done has not been done. I am running out of ways to tell nurses why things haven’t happened yet, when it should have.

This is one of the main reasons I have decided to start this new adventure. I had wanted to do process improvement within the hospital. I love the Lean management theory. I think using Lean management in the hospital could truly bring the focus back to the patients and the frontline workers. I was so excited about this possibility, it seemed like such a great, quick way to make changes to the unit. And the hospital that I work for does subscribe to the Lean management theory. I thought this would be a fairly easy thing to bring into the unit since we should have been doing it for a few years now. Boy was I wrong! Even though it is the system the entire hospital is supposed to be using, each unit is doing what they want, some use it well, some like my unit didn’t use it at all. 

This brought me to understand more about being a change agent within the hospital. This is how I learned that there are so many opinions. I found out that some people will even just dig their heels in solely to go against what is being asked of them. I also learned that people don’t say what they really mean in a meeting. I am even guilty of this at times. Creating a safe environment for people to be able to express their honest opinions is very difficult especially the more people you add to the meetings. The hospitals are such a hard place to build trust, which is kinda funny since we want the patients to trust us. 

People are creatures of habit. They don’t like change. I, personally do like change (most of the time 😊) If something will make things easier, or better, or more appropriate, then I say let’s do it. The adage of “if it aint broke don’t fix it” does not apply anymore. New technology, social media, even the ability of people to go to conferences around the world, all this lets us see new and better ways of doing things. We should not be running from the change but enhancing it to make it better for our organizations and for others. Bringing a large organization together is not an easy feat. This is where hiring the right people is so important. The Gen Z population will be a benefit for organizations. They are being taught to work in groups, and the importance of having different perspectives at the table to make decisions. Just because you have a good opinion doesn’t mean you have the best opinion. Understanding that you are not wrong if the team decides to go in a different direction, and that once that direction is chosen that you can work to have the idea, plan, project, succeed. They are also learning about Plan Do Check Assess (PDCA). If the plan is not working it can and should be changed. There is no reason to move forward with something if it is not working out as intended. Again, the need to be able to be ok with change. 

So, what do I want to get out of this major change I want in my life? I want to be able to reach as many nurses, leaders, and new to the workforce people as I can. I want to share the knowledge that I have gained from the three hospitals that I have worked out of as well as the knowledge from the jobs I had outside of the hospital setting. I want to start conversations. I want people to be asking questions, to hear what others are saying, to be present and understanding of other people’s thoughts. I want people to stop dismissing other people’s thoughts just because they don’t agree with their thoughts. I want people to listen to each other. I want people to know it is ok to make a change, and that you might have to change again, and that is ok. 

Thank you for reading my first blog post. I hope to have many more as I make this transition so that you can learn from me, and I can learn from you. I’m so glad this journey has finally begun for me, and if you are thinking of a change, I hope it begins soon for you!

By Christina White RN