One day I had a patient who needed an NG tube placed. The patient’s nurse experienced as she was, could not place the NG tube.
The nurse even asked other nurses on the floor to help her, but placing the NG tube was a difficult task. Some NG tubes or IV’s are difficult to place.
It’s not the patient’s or the staff’s fault. It may just be the patient’s anatomy.
I then heard someone say, “You brought in the big guns.” So this experienced nurse did not have an easy time with the NG tube, but she took the time. She tried to put the patient at ease, and she explained what she was doing. Eventually, the NG tube was placed.
The patient appreciated the effort. He felt better, and the nurses in the room felt more confident and appreciative as well.
I always appreciate it when I see people walking into a room to help out, and they have a sense of confidence.
Confidence can truly come with experience, but there is also a way of expressing this confidence that doesn’t have anything necessarily to do with experience. This confidence can be expressed with a sense of purposefulness and with a sense of calm. This calm can set the tone in a variety of situations.
Confident people don’t have to hit you over the head with their presence.
Sometimes they can just bring that sense of calm to a situation.
When a person walks into a room with a sense of purpose, it can make other people sense it, and they can become more confident and feel calm.
I think about this when I consider how leaders confront problems. If a leader is experienced and has a sense of confidence, that leader may be presented with problems that seem like a level of 10 out of 10 to surrounding staff.
But the experience of the leader helps him or her realize that the problem is important, but it may only be as significant as a level of 5 out of 10.
It would be difficult for a leader to function if every problem brought to him or her was personally felt to be at a level of 10 out of 10. Now some people may have jobs in which every problem all the time is a 10 out of 10. But it’s great when a leader through experience and confidence can bring a sense of calm to a situation.
What do you do to bring a sense of calm when others need help?