Nursing is a team activity; even when I was a community nurse visiting patients on a one-to-one basis in their own home I was very much aware of the resources and support from the community nursing team and the Trust's wider healthcare team. This series is exploring team working from a number of perspectives and this article focuses on the importance of valuing everyone's individual contribution to the team.
Who is in the team?
Take 2 minutes to reflect on the team that you work with; jot down the names of each person in your team and then, next to their name, list the roles that each of them have. Now think about the people outside of your immediate team: the finance personnel, the electricians, catering staff, all the allied health professionals, security staff … the list is not quite endless, but there are probably twenty or more groups supporting the immediate nursing team. Think of these other teams as a number of concentric circles, with the innermost being your immediate nursing team, the next circle being the allied healthcare staff, then the catering, then building works, gradually working out to the Trust management team. If you view nursing and patient care from this perspective it is easy to see how the various teams all impact on your work as clinical nurses and on direct patient care. Although we are generally aware of the impact that others in the wider healthcare teams have on us, we often are so busy or preoccupied that we forget the impact that we can have on them.
Valuing your colleagues
I'm always a little hesitant when I read management textbooks that give you a formulaic structure for valuing staff; they never seem a very genuine way of interacting with people. It's a bit like going through a supermarket checkout where the staff have obviously been told to greet customers in a set way—‘do you need any help with your packing?’—and smile at each person. Although these behaviours are good attempts at increasing the personalisation that customers feel, it is fairly obvious to the customer when they are genuine expressions of welcome and when they are forced and routine. So, rather than trying to reproduce a set formula for valuing colleagues, take some time to reflect on the various teams that you have worked in and identify some of the ways that different people in those teams have genuinely expressed how they value others. If possible, take some time out to discuss this with others in your team and see what actions various people identify.
Positive valuing behaviours
I've carried out the above exercise with a number of groups over the years and these are a few of the more common behaviours and approaches that people have identified that have made them feel valued:
- Referred to by name. It takes time and effort to learn someone's name, but being able to greet the pharmacist, physiotherapist or occupational therapist who visits your patients by their name is a good way of demonstrating that you value their input. This might mean that you have a notice board in the nurses' station with the names and photos of the regular allied healthcare staff who visit the ward so that all staff can great them by name.
- Thanked for the work they have done. You have to be careful here that you don't become that automated attendant that says ‘have a nice day’. Expressing thanks needs to be genuine; one way to develop this is to reflect on how others are influencing what you do and if they are helpful then express your thanks. Don't just leave this to the charge nurse at the end of the shift.
- Given responsibility for a specific role or function. This is not the same as the senior nurse or manager offloading jobs on to you that they either don't want to do or suddenly don't have the time to do. If the senior nurse takes time to get to know the staff and allocates responsibilities that acknowledge the individual's needs and strengths and provides support as they take on the new role, then the person on the receiving end feels responsible and valued.
- Providing time. We often express how much we value a person by the attention we pay to them—or, you might say, by the time we give them. Again there are no magic formulas to be followed here but I would ask you to reflect over the next few days, both at work and home, on how you allocate time to different people, and reflect on the quality of time you give them. It is not necessarily the volume of time you give to others, but the quality of that time and the focus of the interaction.
Valuing staff is not just the role of the nurse in charge, although the tone is often expressed by the example they set. I've asked you to do a lot of reflection as you have read this article so, whatever your place in the nursing team, reflect on the valuable contribution of your immediate colleagues and others supporting your team and explore various ways of showing you value them—starting with at least a smile.