Millennial Nurses Appreciate Recognition for Their Hard Work

Millennials are people who were born between the years 1982 and 2000. It has been found that recently millennials have surpassed the baby boomers as the largest living generation in the country.

This information was given by the U.S. Census Bureau and can be taken into account for the professional world. In that matter, it should be taken into account for the nursing field, too. The reason is simple. As the baby boomers retire, the workforce should primarily consist of millennials and this poses a brand new administrative challenge for the medicinal field. Above all, the health care field has already entered the phase of a nursing shortage all over the country. At this time, it’s essential to understand at least some general values and/or demands of millennials in order to be successful in recruiting and retaining top talented nurses in the field. Here, an interesting point has been taken into the discussion about the millennial nurses. Continue reading to learn more.

Millennials Love Change

The millennial generation is one that loves changes. Millennials like adventures. They like setting and achieving milestones. When it comes to employment, this is the generation that changes their employers more often than their ancestors. This is the generation that was born with less technology and grew with more advanced technology. The field of health care is no exception. It’s also seeing a constant change from year to year. The nursing field also needs to be filled with individuals who embrace technology when at the same time being able to sustain in an ever-changing work setting.

Millennials are looking for more, so recruiting the best nurses is not only a difficult thing for the employers, but it is also very difficult to retain them. If the employers fail to understand their values, the millennial generation will definitely move out of the field or at least the organization in the lookout for better jobs or organizations. So, how to go about this?

Recognition is Important for Millennials

The millennial generation is one which especially wants to be recognized for their great work. Who doesn’t like appreciation? Each and every individual likes to be recognized at some point in life. But, the millennials feel it important to be recognized for their good deeds. It’s because they have become accustomed to appreciation during their young age and hence, they started anticipating the same in their workplace, too. No matter they have become adults now, they still like to be recognized. And, no one can say it’s wrong because appreciation is a form of motivation that keeps them going, and when it comes to a back breaking profession like nursing, it’s much more important. Millennial nurses have to be informed that they are creating a positive impact on their patients and that their care is important for them.

The Importance of Meaningful Recognition

There is a great saying about meaningful recognition, which is:

"A powerful form of positive feedback, meaningful recognition acknowledges how a person’s actions affect the life of another, is relevant to the recipient and is equivalent to his or her contribution.” - Lefton, 2012

Meaningful recognition is important to nurses. Here are some facts about nurses and what recognition means to them.

• Millennial nurses are more likely to encounter higher compassion fatigue than the baby boomers.
• As the nurses are gaining more and more experience, they are more likely to encounter higher compassion fatigue, as well as lower compassion satisfaction.
• Nurses who have shown higher levels of stress reported higher levels of burnout.
• Nurses with lower satisfaction have shown to have lower compassion satisfaction.

The above are some of the problems that are faced by millennial nurses today. It’s clear that their emotional energy is decreasing with experience and increased stress. Now, it’s time to check what on the job restores the emotional energy of nurses.

The meaningful recognition can restore the emotional energy of nurses by:

• Positive feedback
• Clinical outcomes
• Quality Teamwork
• Increasing one’s self-awareness

The impact of meaningful recognition will pave way for not only the nurse engagement but also impacts the other areas like resident/family experience and healthy work environment. It’s quite normal for the people to wonder how meaningful recognition will impact the resident/family experience. When a health care organization explicitly rewards the compassionate acts by its nurses and supports them during the tougher times, it will increase the higher amount of care given to the patients.

History of Meaningful Recognition in Nursing

It’s important to understand that the meaningful recognition is not new to the nursing field. The history says that the nursing profession has been supported, as well as promoted right from the year 1896 by the “American Nurses Association”. Every year, the awards were presented to the prominent registered nurse in a way to recognize their excellent contributions to their profession and to the field of medicine. In the same view, the ANA Board of Directors launched the “National Nurses Week” to be celebrated from May 6 to 12 of every year. As everyone is aware, celebrations are being conducted across the nation during the nurse week with a view of recognizing the outstanding contributions they make to the community.

Primary Objective and Recognition Criteria

The employers have to understand that the primary objective of meaning recognition in nursing is to inform the members of the health care field of the outstanding accomplishments, as well as the important achievements of the nurses in the delivery of quality health care. As such, the meaningful recognition program should take into account the following recognition criteria:

• Relentless promotion of patient-driven excellence models, skilled communication, effective decision making, and true collaboration
• Transformation of thinking, processes, as well as structures to address the challenges and remove obstacles to promote patient-driven excellence
• Taking forward the mission and key initiative of the health care organization
• Nourishes the place of work and other health care organizations in the community by mentoring, as well as influencing others to attain excellence

When the above-mentioned primary objective and the recognition are taken into account, the meaningful recognition is sure to help recruit and retain the best nurses in the health care organizations. It will make a good business sense, as well as a good people sense. Thus, millennials will be able to resonate and sustain in the work culture where all the generations will work together thereby, offering an outstanding and compassionate patient care.

Creating a Nursing Recognition Program

So, it’s clear that a nursing recognition program would assist the public in getting a better knowledge of the role of nurses and their important contribution to the delivery of quality health care. If an organization wants to create an internal nursing recognition program to honor the outstanding nurses of their organizations, they can very well do it by looking at the other organizations that are already running it.

Some Useful Tips

• Post a message board for the nurses to thank each other
• Conduct some lucky draws
• Create an internal message board
• Nominate the nurses for national award campaigns
• Post candid photos of nurses with notes of appreciation