Outpatient Surgery Magazine

frustrations and prepare them for difficult situations they may face or conversations they'll likely have in the OR. I do this through role-playing sessions, where 2 people will act out a workplace scenario with one person being the aggressor and the other being the reactor. I find real-life stories, examples and scenarios work best; the more detail, the better. I base the scenarios on actual occurrences, such as the older nurse who purposely broke equipment so that when the new hire went to use it, it wouldn't work and the doctor would yell at her; or the vindic- tive nurse who gave the young nurse the wrong directions to locate the instrument tray. With your veteran staff, it's more about raising awareness — something that's especially impor- tant if you've recently added younger, more inexperienced staff or if your facility has some type of fellowship program for new RNs. Experienced nurses tend to forget what it's like when you're just starting out in the OR. This is an opportunity to remind them and to highlight common gen- eration differences. Provide practical tools. For more experienced staff, education is often the best way to describe generational differ- ences. For your younger, more inexperi- enced staff, however, you may have to take it a step further. After my education sessions with novice nurs- es, I do a debrief on what hap- pened during those role-playing scenarios. Then, we go over some de-escalation techniques they can use during difficult situations. It's all about giving these nurses practical tools they can use. One of these tools is a script on how to own their feelings and address situations head-on with very specific language. If a newer nurse feels like an older nurse is being hard on her to the point of bullying, then she needs to have a difficult conversation. That means finding the right time (not in the middle of a busy case!) and saying, "I feel like we're not in agreement here, and I feel that you don't like working with me. What can I do to make it better?" More often than not, if you confront a bully, she will stop her bully- ing. At the same time, it's important for newer nurses to understand the problem might not be personal. With all the turnover facilities face among younger nurses, preceptors and educators can get burned out — especially at hospitals and surgi- cal centers that are actively try- ing to backfill for the departure of retiring nurses. In the end, if you can get differ- ent generations to under- stand each other, they're much more likely to work together as a team. OSM Ms. Rowan (krowan1@ northwell.edu) is the director of system perioperative educa- tion at Northwell Health in Lake Success, N.Y. 3 • NOVICE NURSES Prepare your Millennial and Gen-Xer nurses for the difficult situations they might face in the OR. Interested in finding out more about how to manage the different generations you have working together at your facility? Karen Rowan, MSN, RN-BC, CNOR, will present "From Baby Boomers to Millennials: Creating a More Cohesive Nursing Workforce" at OR Excellence, Oct. 3-5 at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. Ms. Rowan's talk will cover everything from understanding the differ- ent generations and the corresponding stereotypes about them to preventing the workplace issues — bullying, low morale, high turnover — that lead to poor patient outcomes. Register at orexcellence.com. Creating a Cohesive Nursing Workforce LEARN MORE AT OR EXCELLENCE A U G U S T 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 1 5

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