Marie Manthey’s Nursing Salon

After several years of steady growth and solid experience, it became clear several months ago that more Salons are needed.   Several reasons why:

• Many nurses commented that this is the only place they get to talk about really important issues they face.
• I was notifying people about ’standing room ony’….or starting ’stand-by lists’ because my living room walls wouldn’t expand any more.
• It was becoming so crowded people weren’t getting enough chance to talk

So, we started encouraging others to consider sponsoring, and I wrote up some easy guidelines to help.   I am delighted to tell you that we now have two monthly, and a third one may be starting up in the near future.   I am ecstatic!

A calendar of ‘Salons’ is being developed for the U of M School of Nursing, Zeta Chapter website….and I hope to see even more proliferate.   My dream is to have a calendar on the website where any nurse can go any time to find a Salon that fits her schedule ….and is in her neighborhood.  Maybe 8 or 10 a month!   Around the metro area, including the suburbs!  We have a ways to go, but this is a start.   (Feels similar to me to the start of Primary Nursing in that it ‘feels so right’….it must be replicated.)  As you read the posted comments, you can see that people are interested in other parts of the country and I will do everything I can to help them be sucessful.

BTW….I took the summer off  from the blog, but not the Salons.   I apologize for not checking it more and sharing our experiences at the Salons we held every month.   I will do better at keeping up with the blog.

Last night’s Salon was another powerful experience.   There were about 18 people here….and the conversation was fairly general….three senior students talked about their ‘first job jitters’ and a couple of middle aged nurses and a soon-to-retire nurse talked about ‘reinventing’ themselves.

Then a relatively new grad told of a recent incident with a patient of hers who fell and sustained an injury.  The unit was very busy and the new nurse was not able to get someone in to help her return the patient to bed, despite asking several people….everyone was too busy.   She felt her failure was not being assertive enough and was suffering extreme guilt because she felt totally responsible.    That comment opened a floodgate of experiences we had all had when we were involved in a mistake….and also very valuable information about root cause analysis and other error-prevention measures currently in use.   The upshot of all of us sharing our ‘mistake-experiences’  was a deep connection around those shared experiences.  And the new nurse felt the kind of support I had received from my head nurse fifty years ago, when as a new grad, my patient fell out of bed and I felt so guilty I believed I was unworthy to be a nurse.   I truly believed I needed to give up nursing!    She put her arms around me and made me promise to come back to work the next day….and did that for several days.   Last night, all of us….from student to retiree, and many in between did just that for the new nurse.

During check out several people commented how extraordinary the discussion had been….and how good they feel being a nurse.

And the students had the rare opportunity to again hear the truth about the real world of nursing….something for which they frequently express heartfelt appreciation.