A Clean Slate
Take a look at, redefine your personal and professional priorities

By Beth Ulrich, Ed.D, RN, South Central Editor
December 10, 2001

The hustle and bustle and joy of the holiday season soon will give way to the coming of a new year. Thoughts will turn to personal, professional and organizational New Year's resolutions as we think about what we want to accomplish in 2002.

In order to improve in the coming year, first we need to realistically evaluate our present status. Perhaps the best way to do that is to try to visualize our personal and professional worlds as others see them. That sounds simple, but is often difficult to do. It takes only 21 days for something to become a habit and probably less time for us to integrate something so totally that we are no longer aware of it.

If you've ever worked on a new patient care unit or in a new office, you know what I mean. On day one, everything is sparkling clean. The hallways and floors are clear. Nothing is taped to the walls. A month later, you walk by the clutter in the hall and the stacks of papers and supplies on the floor look as though they had always been there. The things taped to the wall have blended into the wall in your mind and you no longer notice that they exist.

I once held a contest in a hospital with a prize for the oldest memo found on any active bulletin board. The winner-brown on the edges, with many thumbtack holes and totally unrelated to anything occurring at the time-had been up for 12 years!

Try an experiment tomorrow when you go in to work. Take a moment and look at the setting with fresh eyes. Act as if you've never seen it before-as though you're a new patient or family member arriving on your unit or a nurse coming in for a first interview. Walk through your work setting. What do you see now? Clutter? Organization? Chaos? Quiet competence? Frantic motion? Smiles? Frowns? A safe environment?

A number of studies have shown that we have only a few seconds to make a first impression and that, when it's not positive, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to change it. Is what you see the impression you want to give or the environment in which you want to work? If not, what needs to be changed?

Next, look at your personal and professional calendars for the past two weeks and see where and with whom you've spent time. If you saw someone else spending his or her time that way, what would you think is important to that person? Is that what's important to you? If not, you've just found the basis for some of your New Year's resolutions.

Experienced nurses understand setting and acting on priorities in patient care, but it always seems harder to prioritize what we want to be important in our personal and professional lives.

We all want to make the world a better, safer place in the coming year, but we have to start with the parts we can control-ourselves and our work. An honest assessment of where we are now is the beginning of a plan that will help us improve both our personal and professional lives in 2002.

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