Nurses must be ‘agile and compassionate’ amid changing healthcare systems

Nurses have been encouraged to remain both agile and compassionate amid changing healthcare systems and emerging technologies.

Global nursing consultant and director of the Queen’s Institute of Community Nursing’s (QICN) international community nursing observatory (ICNO) Dr Barbara Stilwell delivered a speech at the International Home Care Nurses Organization (IHCNO)’s 5th annual global conference held in London last week.

During her keynote address on global health nursing, Dr Stilwell emphasised the importance of nurses being adaptable to the ‘changing world’, particularly in the face of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI).

She said if delegates should take anything away from her keynote, it is that nurses are ‘adapting leaders’.

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‘We have to be agile, because the world is changing,’ she said.

‘We know it’s changing, AI is coming. We’ve got to learn how to use that to our advantage.’

She also pointed to a rise in genetic testing among the public, and the increased demands that will likely be placed on nurses as they help patients interpret their results and any health conditions they uncover.

She added that, amid a changing healthcare system, it is important to remain compassionate.

‘We have to be agile as well as compassionate,’ she said.

‘So we have to say, “I see an issue – what can I do here? What can I contribute here?” But not lose that compassion.’

Dr Stilwell added: ‘It’s important to be courageous too. It’s important to go into those multidisciplinary team meetings and speak up… we need our courage to say as nurses, “I’ve got nursing skills, this is what we do”.’

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The executive director of the Nursing Now Global campaign added that being a nurse is an ‘emotional labour’ but pinpoints it’s ‘critical’ for nurses to establish relationships with patients and instil that compassion.

She said: ‘You say, “How’s your daughter doing? How are you doing with that?” That’s saying, “I see you, you’re a person, you’re not just patient number”.

‘This relationship I think is critical, and if we don’t do it, we get nowhere. You can’t pretend this stuff.

‘You’ve got to want to make that relationship, and that is why nursing is such an emotional labour, I believe.’

She concluded that nursing was about ‘accumulating knowledge’, referencing a Florence Nightingale quote which states nursing is ‘a progressive art such that to stand still is to go backward’.

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Dr Stilwell said: ‘Nursing is a very serious, delightful thing, like life, requiring training, experience and devotion.

‘It’s a power of accumulating instead of losing those things.’