Building Relationships For Nursing Success.
Updated: Nov 19, 2018
As a nurse, nursing student, or nurse practitioner, you will end up building relationships with many people. Building strong relationships in your workplace is very important for your career. Here are a few tips to help you build strong relationships as a nurse.
1. Realize the importance of relationships at work.
Out of all the people you talk with on a day to day basis as a nurse, some people may be more important for your career than you might think. Many people might think that if they do their job exceptionally well, then they might also receive exceptional rewards. It might be possible though, that if you do a stellar job on a day to day basis without maintaining or building relationships with the right people, your hard work will go unrecognized. Now if you are a shy person, and you don't believe in talking with people, building relationships may be harder for you than it is for others, but it is not impossible. Every nurse should try to balance the time they spend with their patients, and the time spent with their coworkers.
The importance of having coworkers who trust you is invaluable to your career as a nurse. Having a close connection with coworkers will help you during the stressful times. You will also have more fun at work, decreasing the stress that inevitably comes with the nursing field. Having a good and strong relationship with your leadership team is also important. It is true that nursing leaders are impressed with a strong worker, but if they have no idea who you are, there is no emotional tie to your work. It may also be true that it is easier for a nursing leader to recommend promotions to nurses who they personally know because they will have no doubt that the nurse will be able to perform the new job.
#2. Begin early to build relationships.
If you understand the importance of building relationships, you will know that there is no better time to start building relationships than as soon as you can. Nursing students can begin to build relationships with their preceptors, or even the nursing leaders at their clinical sites before asking for potential job offers. Nurses who are starting a new job should begin to immediately build relationships with coworkers. Being friendly and showing that you are willing to be open to other people will only help you in your nursing career. The nursing field is competitive and stressful, with different stressors coming at you on a daily basis. Many new nurses on a unit whether they are a new grad or not, have trouble with forming good relationships at the beginning of their new job. There are possibly hundreds of reasons why this is, but the key point for you is to not let these problems stop you from trying to be friendly, and make friends at work right when you start the job.
3. Let time build your relationships.
Time should naturally build your relationships with your coworkers, and nursing leaders. If you are in your clinical rotations, you might not have as much time to build relationships with the hospital workers. When you start working, stay with your jobs as long as necessary to build strong relationships. It is natural for nurses to want to experience multiple areas of nursing to help build a strong work experience. The work experience is a great, and often times a needed item to help build your resume portfolio. Having spent the time to build a strong relationship with your resources on your resume will possibly hold more weight than your experience.
If you were to look at someones resume and see that they have ICU, ER, Med Surg, and Psych experience, you would most likely have a great candidate for your unit. All this experience would be worth less though if you contacted the directors for these units only to find that they either hardly knew the nurse, or that they have only heard negative and little positive attributes from the nurse. If this same nurse had the experience from these units and also had a strong relationship with each director, who had only good things to say about the nurse, then the nurse would be a much stronger candidate for just about any position. Remember that it is not impossible to make good relationships with your coworkers and leaders in a short time, but letting your relationships build on your good character, and hard work over time, will help solidify your worth as a solid nurse.
Key Points.
1. Realize the importance of relationships at work.
2. Begin early to build relationships.
3. Let time build your relationships.