HealthLeaders' Top 5 Nursing Stories of 2020

In a year unlike any other, what were the hottest nursing topics? Here's a roundup of our most popular nursing stories.

As we approach the end of the calendar year, let's look back on the year that was. I have compiled a list of HealthLeaders' most-read nursing stories in 2020.

Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 was the most popular topic, followed by other themes such as nurse advancement to the C-suite, millennial and Gen Z nurses, and racism in the healthcare work environment. The following is a list of the top five HealthLeaders nursing stories, ranked by popularity.

#5. Nurses Rise to New Levels in the C-Suite

Nurses are no longer limited in the senior leadership positions to which they can aspire. Nurses have the skills and knowledge for success in a variety of C-suite roles to make healthcare better. In this article, three healthcare executives who have advanced from the bedside to the C-suite share how their backgrounds as nurses have helped them find success leading organizations.

Having a nursing background has helped Joyce Markiewicz, RN, BSN, MBA, CHCE, executive vice president and chief business development officer at Catholic Health in Buffalo, New York, understand what makes or breaks a good business development opportunity, she says.

"Because I've been at the bedside, I look at things through a different lens. When I'm looking at a potential business opportunity, I don't always just look at what does it do to the bottom line," she says. "Of course, that's an important component of it, but I also try to look at how it aligns with the mission of Catholic Health and what it's going to do for the patient. Does it improve access to care? Is it going to provide a better service? Is it something that people need? Is it what they want?"

#4. How Nurse Leaders Fixed 4 Areas Reshaped BY COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an environment that calls for new ways of delivering care. This has led to a great deal of innovation from both bedside nurses and nursing leadership. In this article, nurses share how they responded to the never-seen-before crisis to care for patients and make the profession stronger.

For example, at Penn Medicine Princeton Health, in an effort to preserve PPE and provide good patient care, nurses created new care models in record time, says Sheila Kempf, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, the organization's chief nursing officer.

"In the beginning, the nurse performed all patient-related tasks because it was about preserving PPE and providing good care. For every patient on the med-surg floors who needed respiratory treatments, the nurses completed the treatments. They provided all the dietary and environmental services tasks," she says.

But following COVID-19's initial appearance, the nurses at Penn Medicine Princeton Health redesigned the nursing model to include an "inside" nurse within the patient room and an "outside" nurse or "runner" outside the patient room.

#3. Nurses Must Fight Against Racism. ANA's President Shares How

As Americans in multiple cities across the country protested to address racism and its effects, multiple nursing groups, including National Nurses United, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, and the American Nurses Association, released statements regarding the issue of racism.

Ernest J. Grant, PhD, RN, FAAN, president of the ANA, said in the association's statement. "As a black man and registered nurse, I am appalled by senseless acts of violence, injustice, and systemic racism and discrimination. Even I have not been exempt from negative experiences with racism and discrimination. The Code of Ethics for Nurses obligates nurses to be allies and to advocate and speak up against racism, discrimination and injustice. This is non-negotiable."

In this article, Grant explains that when unchecked racism in the healthcare work environment becomes deep rooted and ingrained, it can affect the care patients of color receive. Racism in the healthcare work environment can also prevent people of color from attaining leadership level positions.

"Racism is a public health crisis, and I think as nurses, the most important thing that we can do is to educate ourselves and use the fact that we do have the trust of the [public] to influence and educate others and to realize the systemic injustice that is going on. And, of course, [nurses can] encourage people to educate themselves and to vote for political candidates who have a proven track record of working against racism and injustice. What's going to help to promote change is to realize the power of the vote that you have and the power of the voting box to help bring about change and reform," says Grant.

#2. What CNOs Should Know About Millennial and Gen Z Nurses

As millennial and Gen Z nurses have started to make up a larger portion of the nursing workforce, leaders at Nashville-based HCA Healthcare were curious about what matters to them. They teamed up with The Center for Generational Kinetics to study what drives, engages, and motivates millennial and Gen Z nurses. The results are published in the report, Employment Vitals: Millennial and Gen Z Nurse Expectations.

Millennial and Gen Z nurses cited team dynamics, professional growth opportunities, and flexible scheduling as important factors in the work environment.

Jane Englebright, PhD, RN CENP, FAAN, senior vice president and chief nurse executive at HCA Healthcare, says, "[Nurses] want to grow and develop and learn new things, but they want to do that at a little bit faster pace than what we have seen in the past. [M]ovement [in the organization] and doing something new and different feels like progression to them, whereas traditionally we thought if you weren't getting a promotion or moving into management, it wasn't progression. They see any opportunity to learn and gain new skills and knowledge as progression, which was refreshing to see."

#1. COVID-19 Is Affecting Critical Care Nurses. What Nurse Leaders Need to Know

As many Americans sheltered in place due to stay-at-home orders, nurses and other healthcare professionals worked each day to care for patients with and without COVID-19.

In this article, Megan Brunson, RN, MSN, CCRN-CSC, CNL, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Immediate Past President and night shift supervisor for the cardiovascular ICU at Medical City Dallas shares what nurse leaders can do to support nurses during the pandemic. This includes masking and gowning up with them, acknowledging their ethical and moral conflicts, and keeping them aware of what resources are available to them, such as an Employee Assistance Program and counseling.

"We need to encourage staff to speak up when they're seeing things that are distressing them now, whether it be care situations or ethical concerns, and [to escalate those issues]. When you do that, you're asking nurses to be courageous, to speak up, and sometimes that's not easy. So being available as a leader to really encourage them to have that courage is important. Then finally, acknowledge what they're doing and their contributions," says Brunson.