More Nurses in the Board Room Please! --- Phil Zarlengo, AARP Board Chair

By Phil Zarlengo, AARP Board Chair
 
Last month in Providence, RI, I joined more than 80 business, community and health care leaders representing health systems, community health organizations, government agencies, non-profits and nursing groups to discuss the role that nurses should have in the leadership of these organizations. While no one doubts the important role that nurses play in patient care, this distinctive meeting focused on leveraging the untapped value of nurses as leaders in the boardroom.
 
AARP was early to recognize how much our members and the public have to gain from having nurses on the association’s board of directors. In the years that I have been on the board, I have had the privilege of working with many of them.
 
Surrounded by their accomplishments, it’s difficult for me to grasp some of the results of a Gallup/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation poll of health care leaders. Those leaders put nurses at the bottom of the list of people who are going to influence health reform over the next five to ten years. More than two-thirds of them said that a major barrier to greater influence in health care leadership is that nurses are not perceived to be important health care decision makers compared to physicians.
 
These perceptions are overdue for a change. This plague of low expectations makes no sense when it comes to nurses. Health care governance, for example, needs directors and trustees who understand health care delivery. More than that, however, boards of governance also need leadership with firsthand, in-depth knowledge of complex organizations and how best to navigate the relationships within them. Nurse leaders have that knowledge, along with strong competencies in management, communications and leadership.
 
I’ve heard nursing compared to “running a bunch of small businesses all over the place.”
 
Those sound like board of directors skills to me.
 
In addition, when nurses speak, they are believed. Theirs is a trusted and credible voice. Doctors and nurses are the information sources about health and health care in whom opinion leaders have a great deal of confidence. And those opinion leaders share with me a great desire to see nurses’ influence and leadership increase. It’s hard to imagine a more valuable contribution to the success of health care reform than elevating the influence of nurses. I look forward to it!
 
To learn more about CCNA’s Nurses on Boards project, visit http://championnursing.org/content/nurses-boards.