Nursing at the Speed of Trust

Seeking a career in nursing could be seen as an exercise in trust. We nurses willingly endure a grueling educational experience, place ourselves in the hands of nursing professors and preceptors, and otherwise trust that the blood, sweat, tears, and expense of pursuing our goal is worthwhile. In essence, we move at the speed of trust as we enter the nursing universe.

Trusting Ourselves

The first act of trust in our nursing journey is trusting oneself. Even while our peers, colleagues, friends, or family may caution us against a nursing career, there’s that small, still voice in our head that tells us that nursing is the choice for us.

Becoming a nurse is an admirable goal filled with uncertainty, and there are naturally many questions:

Will there be jobs when I graduate?
Will I actually like nursing?
Will I burn out, be eaten alive, or kill a patient along the way?
Am I crazy to want a career in healthcare?

Even as self-doubt creeps in, many still take the plunge for various personal reasons. For some, it’s the rosy job statistics and earning potential. For others, it’s the goal of becoming a nurse practitioner or advanced practice registered nurse (APRN). And when you get right down to it, many nurses will tell you they like helping people, so why not join a highly respected profession renowned for doing just that?

Once we become nurses, the trust continues as we make life-and-death decisions on behalf of our patients, plot our nursing careers, and navigate the challenges of the healthcare environment we’ve chosen. And, when we’re tired, burned out, or at the end of our rope, there’s the trust in ourselves to know when it’s time to walk away or otherwise shake things up.

Trust in oneself is essential to nursing, and those who lose that trust must be diligent not to lose it for long, as it’s crucial to happiness and satisfaction.

Trusting Others

Nursing is a collaborative profession. Few nursing tasks are performed in a vacuum, and trust in our colleagues is generally key.

The OR circulating nurse places her trust in her peers in the surgical suite. The home hospice nurse trusts that the social worker’s notes are up to date regarding the patient’s psychosocial situation. The school nurse must have mutual trust and respect with both the teachers with whom she collaborates and the students he cares for. The collaborating professor and clinical preceptor must trust that each is providing their students with the best possible knowledge and experience.

When the code team rushes in to attempt to save a patient, solid trust must inform every action of each team member. When the flight nurse leaps from the helicopter to assess an injured hiker on a windswept mountaintop, the trust between that nurse and other members of the flight crew must be entirely in sync.

Successful care delivery is built on teamwork and trust, and healthcare teams move decidedly at the speed of trust.

Broken Trust

Employers often erode nurses’ trust due to poor management, excessive workloads, and feelings of being undervalued. When nurses feel like so much cannon fodder, their trust in the system is damaged, sometimes permanently. And when their voices seem to count for nothing, some nurses stop speaking out, retreating into a defeated silence. This can lead to unhappiness, burnout, stress-related illness, or internalized oppression, manifesting as bullying and incivility.

Nurses hearts are broken every day. When nurses treat their nursing brethren like scapegoats and targets, demoralization results. When managers dismiss nurses’ complaints or belittle their needs, we often see the development of a rugged, soulless stoicism bordering on masochism. Nurse martyrdom ultimately leads to burnout and discontent, and patient safety can be compromised as a side effect.

Trusting the Future

Many nurses are trusting in the future. The nurse practitioner career track is booming right now, and nursing has remained the most trusted profession in the United States for more than 20 years. The public places its trust in nurses because it sees nurses as the lifeblood and connective tissue of healthcare, despite the public’s ongoing relative ignorance about what nurses do.

Nurses and potential nurses who apply to NP school, associate and BSN degree programs, and CNA or LPN training courses are doing so because they trust the durability of the nursing profession.

Those who seek nurse training within the armed forces know that their contribution will be both life-saving and crucial to military readiness. Nurses who care for schoolchildren recognize the vital importance of child health to a child’s overall success in education. Those who engage in nursing research understand that advancing our collective evidence base is crucial for future generations of nurses.

The future may be unwritten, yet nurses know they are part of the future of healthcare. Without the expertise and knowledge of nurses, the healthcare machine would grind to a halt. And without the lifeblood of nursing at its core, the system would fail altogether.

Nothing is ever truly certain. However, if those who wish to become nurses continue to trust themselves, then our nursing pipelines will remain filled. When those nurses emerge from their education, even more trust will be needed to affirm that the teams they join are cohesive, healthy, communicative, and effective and that the employers they choose to work for treat them fairly and kindly.