The “basics”

FigureIT'S TRADITIONAL TO START the new year with an editorial treatise on resolutions and wishes for the coming year, possibly akin to the annual strategic planning sessions you've had at your own organizations. You perform your SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, celebrate accomplishments, and set your road map for the next year or years. Your plan probably includes goals for patient safety/quality, financial viability, workforce stabilization, efficiency, staff engagement, and maybe a stab at health equity. Am I close? These aims are foundational, and honestly, are the basics we revisit year after year. It makes sense to routinely examine, as we (the collective “we” from the boardroom to the bedside) are accountable for these important objectives. Our journeys to success evolve, sometimes dramatically. Healthcare is consumed with emerging technology, which has a (mostly) positive impact on workload, workflow, and knowledge. We're piloting and implementing new care-delivery models, ranging from adjusting skill mix to using various virtual options, to maximizing scope of practice in every classification, and more. Disruption has certainly led to innovation. Early outcomes are appearing in the literature and must focus on patient, community, and nurse outcomes, our true north. Whether or not you're at the forefront of innovation, the basics of improving nurse-sensitive quality indicators and patient and staff experience may be on your goal list every year. But how you get there each year is the fun part, and where your leadership shines. Those basics aren't easy, and they shouldn't be boring. Being strategic about your tactical approach is important. Connecting the dots to practice is the leader's job, as is focusing on process (not necessarily outcomes) while breaking down goals into short-term wins. Maximize professional governance. Use those scorecards not only to monitor performance but also to translate the data to information for those at the point of care. The emphasis shouldn't be on the tasks, but on the greater purpose and impact, with everyone accountable for their own practices and outcomes. Navigate organizational complexity while partnering with stakeholders in and outside of nursing to escalate success. Make your strategy visible to celebrate your teams, encourage others, and improve your brand, with confidence and humility, of course. Thinking outside the box should be part of our strategy, too. Syl Trepanier, a nurse thought leader, reminds us, “Let's ask ourselves, what do patients need?” as we let go of the status quo. Another thought leader, Joy Parchment, used social media to post about an underwhelming patient experience in acute care and ask a question of readers: “How do you validate that your teams adhere to organizational standards and are able to consistently meet your patients' needs?” That concept seems basic, especially to patients, but are you doing it? Is patient-centeredness and caring manifested every shift, every day? The same can be said about validating staff engagement; an annual employee experience survey isn't enough. Yet without engagement, neither the patient-care fundamentals nor the innovation will happen. Boeing, Starbucks, Delta, and Citibank are all getting back to basics with their corporate strategies. For nurse leaders, focusing on patients and our teams is a foundational basic that has worked in the past and the present and will work for the future. Bring it on in 2025!Figure