Networking: Becoming a Pediatric Nurse Networker
Article Outline
This editorial is devoted to networking. Networking was a significant theme of this year's Society of Pediatric Nurses (SPN) annual conference in Atlanta, GA. In the SPN conference brochure, networking was described as a way to develop collegial relationships; to identify, discuss, and compare the way we, as pediatric nurses, address the concerns and issues of pediatric patients and their families; and to respond to the national and international trends that are influencing our care delivery. The annual conference provides the richness of person-to-person discovery. I have collected business cards, e-mail addresses, and pages of valuable notes from the many SPN conferences I have attended. Conference attendance, however, is not always an option. The Journal of Pediatric Nursing and the SPN Web site provide other avenues for networking that I will describe in this editorial.
Every year, the March/April JPN issue features the abstracts of poster presentations from the annual SPN conference. The abstracts cover an array of topics relevant to pediatric nurses in practice, research, education, and leadership/management. The abstracts provide some basic background, a purpose, methods and interventions, and a discussion or conclusions. These abstracts are a “sample” of the knowledge and resources shared among the conference presenters. This issue highlights new and innovative ideas from the 2009 SPN conference. By reading through this year's abstracts, I noticed a greater focus on quality and safety and human resource issues, such as recruitment and retention. I believe that these poster abstracts reflect the reality of pediatric practice environments and the challenges we face to ensure quality, safe care delivery for children and their families. My area of expertise is leadership/management, and here are some of the key concepts that caught my attention as I perused the abstracts: increasing staff satisfaction, turnover rates of new graduates, development and evaluation of a shared governance model, and clinical advancement. I also found many excellent examples of evidence-based standards and protocols. One abstract, for instance, was able to increase influenza vaccination rates among health care workers by 70% in high-risk care areas, such as hematology/oncology and critical care. This vaccination program, from Cook Children's Health Care System (Fort Worth, TX), received a 2007–2008 best practices award from the American Nurses Association. Some other evidence-based posters dealt with validation of a pediatric opioid/benzodiazepine weaning tool (Alfred I DuPont Hospital for Children from Wilmington, DE); data from an outpatient clinic Synagis® program (Arkansas Children's Hospital from Little Rock, AR); and a daily goals checklist for the pediatric critical care unit that ensures a more systematic and efficacious approach to patient care issues, such as central line removal and team communications with patients' families (The University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and The Children's Hospital, Aurora, CO).
The SPN conference poster abstracts include the authors' names and their organizational affiliations. Check out these organizational Web sites. This is a great way to benchmark or compare what is going on among some of the leading children's hospitals and health care institutions in the world. The SPN membership directory can put you in touch with the authors if you have specific questions or issues that you would like to discuss with them.
If you are an SPN member, you are receiving this journal, but you also have access to a variety of networking opportunities on the Web site at: https://www.pedsnurses.org. Listserve enrollment allows you to network online with national and international members. As the editor of the Clinical Practice Column, I use the Listserve to keep me informed of the “hot topics” being discussed among members. This online network has been an excellent way for members to electronically connect with one another. Online networks of practice are a cost-effective way to share knowledge and resources, and these types of networks can hasten the process of creating a common professional identity with respect to social action and policy/advocacy goals (Wasko & Faraj, 2005). On the SPN Web site, you will find an advocacy tool kit. Although this tool kit is intended for individual nurses to learn more about advocacy for children and their families, the online network can serve as a way to unite, to support, and to reinforce pediatric nurses with similar advocacy ambitions.
While you are at the Web site, take notice of other networking opportunities, including announcements of upcoming events. In addition, most of the resources on the Web site are accompanied by another networking opportunity: a place to “click” and share your comments with others. The Updated Pediatric Nursing Scope and Standards of Practice document, for instance, is an evidence-based resource that “represents the discipline, scope and standards of all nurses specializing in pediatrics” (from https://www.pedsnurses.org). Because this professional document represents all of us, the site encourages every member to provide feedback that will assist ongoing revisions and updates.
You will occasionally notice online surveys at the SPN Web site. These are designed to garner your input and ensure the best representation of SPN members. Survey results are regularly published on the Web site, and survey demographics and outcomes can be another way to know how you fit into the “mix” that is pediatric nursing. By knowing more about each other, regardless of our disparate geographic locations, surveys help define our common goals, needs, and aspirations.
There is another feature of this journal that exemplifies networking on a broader scale: between professional organizations. Every journal issue contains an SPN News column and a Pediatric Endocrinology Nursing Society (PENS) News column. To better leverage professional resources, SPN and PENS share this journal as their official journal. This offers the readership wider exposure to general pediatric nursing practice and to a significant specialty practice area within our discipline. This also widens the networking potential among the journal readers.
Why does networking matter? Why should we expend the effort to join a Listserve, fill out a survey, attend a conference, or investigate what is going on in specialty areas of pediatric nursing? The simple answer is that networking makes us better professionals. Networking is a mechanism for increasing our power base (Swan, Scarbrough, & Robertson, 2002). Most of us do our work more efficiently by sharing information and resources via informal and formal internal networks within our practice environments. To avoid becoming a closed system, however, evidence and innovations have to come from outside (Swan et al., 2002). Networking with others outside our own organizations provides access to new information and expertise that we do not possess locally. According to two, renowned business gurus who specialize in networking, “for people who have rarely looked outside their organizations, this (external networking) is an important first step, one that fosters a deeper understanding of themselves and the environments in which they move” (Ibarra & Hunter, 2007, p. 43). Ibarra and Hunter describe networking as a skill that takes regular practice to develop. The more we engage in networking activities, the better we get at it. “The best networkers…take every opportunity to give to, and receive from, the network, whether they need help or not” (p. 47).
To get started, as a pediatric nurse, you have several networking opportunities available to you through this journal, through a membership in our profession pediatric nursing organization, SPN, or as a member of a specialty practice organization, such as PENS. Begin simply, by connecting with one other pediatric nurse outside your institution—either by asking a question or sharing something you know. Networking research indicates that those individuals who build networking competencies tend to be more successful in their careers because they are learning and professionally growing—continually. I hope that this editorial will provide you with the impetus to become an active, engaged pediatric nurse networker.
References
- . How leaders create and use networks. Harvard Business Review. 2007, January;40–47
- . The construction of ‘communities of practice’ in the management of innovation. Management Learning. 2002;33:477–496
- . Why should I shared? Examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice. Management Information Systems Quarterly. 2005;29:35–57
PII: S0882-5963(08)00496-X
doi:10.1016/j.pedn.2008.12.001
© 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
