Chapter 5: Thinking about Leadership and Nurses as Self-Care Agents
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Description
In this Chapter, Dr. Summers describes the impact on her career of her Masters program (MSN, 1981, Advanced Clinical Practice) and her specialization in Advanced Clinical Practice. She explains what that practice meant at the time and how her work in this area helped give her grounding for leadership roles.
Dr. Summers explains Dorothea Orem’s theory that the role of a nurse is to support a patient in his/her return to optimal heath so they can perform self-care. She stresses that nurses work as partners in a patient’s healthcare: Dr. Summers gives examples of how this works in practice.
Dr. Summers next talks about how she learned to think differently in her graduate program about self-care and also how she began to realize that she could have more of an impact on care as a leader. Dr. Summers describes her leadership style as “transformational” in that she serves as a role model and inspires people to be at their best.
Identifier
SummersB_01_20140123_C05
Publication Date
1-23-2014
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Barbara Summers, PhD, Oral History Interview, January 23, 2014
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional PathProfessional Path The Researcher Definitions, Explanations, Translations The History of Health Care, Patient Care Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents The Administrator Leadership
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Barbara Summers, PhD:
And then in 1981, I graduated with my master’s of science in nursing in what was called advanced clinical practice, but it was an oncology clinical nurse specialist.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And I was going to ask you what does advanced clinical practice mean?
Barbara Summers, PhD:
Well, I would say that it could still be applied today to nurses who receive their graduate education with a focus in clinical care and clinical practice, in contrast to nurses who have graduate education in leadership and management or nurses who have graduate education to prepare them to teach. It’s really about clinical practice. So it’s advanced anatomy and physiology, advanced pharmacology, all of those things, learning about systems and how to use a systems approach when evaluating opportunities for improving care and the environment of care, learning about nursing theory, more in-depth study of nursing theory.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So how did that experience contribute to your understanding of leadership, help you ground those opinions that Ms. Lockhart had observed? Were you aware of that at the time?
Barbara Summers, PhD:
Yes, a couple of things. One of the nursing theories that I was exposed to in my undergraduate program and then in my graduate program was developed by a woman named Dorothea Orem, and it’s called Orem’s Theory of Self-Care, and the fundamental tenet of the theory is that the role of nurses is to support our clients, our patients, to be able to return to an optimal state of health that will allow them to fully engage in their own self-care. But in those times when their illness or their absence of health prevents them from being able to do that, then nurses serve as substitute self-care agents for the patient, doing the things that they would do for themselves if they could. So that was very meaningful for me in thinking about my interactions with individual patients, that my goal was always to work with them as a partner in helping them to return to the optimum state of health that they could achieve and providing support for them to do the things that they would do if they were able. Whether that is teaching them or whether that’s helping them with eating and elimination, whatever it may be, doing those things that they would do if they were able but they could not. I like to tell our young nurses who are thinking about going back to school, “In graduate school, you learn particular stuff that’s new, concepts, etc., but more than anything, graduate school teaches you how to think differently than you did before you were in graduate school.” So in graduate school, I was, again, working from Orem’s Self-Care Theory, but I started to see that from the perspective of the nurse being my client, not the patient. So, following through with Orem’s tenet that the role of the nurse is to help the client to achieve the highest level of health possible, as a clinical nurse specialist, I wanted to be able to support a population of patients realizing the highest level of health possible, and I was going to do that through bedside nurses. So it was enormously appealing to me to come to the understanding that I had the opportunity to have an impact on a much larger number of patients as a leader than I would as an individual practitioner. So, I mean, that clicked for me, and that was wonderful.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
When do you feel your impulse to be a leader began to show itself in your life? Was it something that happened when you were a kid or—
Barbara Summers, PhD:
No, I think it happened when I was in college and when I was practicing as a nurse.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And what was it that gave you that impulse to kind of take charge and—
Barbara Summers, PhD:
You know, honestly, I can’t tell you, and I didn’t really think of myself as a leader, even though my manager identified me as having leadership potential. I didn’t really help of myself as a leader until I was in my graduate program and, you know, you would find yourself in—as you do in all graduate programs, you have to do group work. You know, God forbid you would do work on your own. You had to learn how to work in groups. So I would invariably end up being tagged as the leader of the group effort. I didn’t seek it, but it was because other people said, “Well, you know, you’re good at this,” or, “You’re good at that,” and so I would move into that role.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
From what you were saying earlier, you know, it sounded like there was a sense of conviction or confidence that showed itself to people. You felt that you saw something very clearly and you wanted to go for that, like an inner compass, you know. I’m just wondering if that’s what people saw that—you know. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but—
Barbara Summers, PhD:
I think, you know, there’s lots of definitions of leadership, but I think leading is a state of being. I mean, if you’re a leader, you’re in a state of being a leader, and everything you do has to be consistent with being a leader. My definition of leadership is engaging the hearts and minds of others in pursuit of a shared vision, but the way you do that is by leading, not telling people what they have to do, but by leading.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And what is your style of leadership?
Barbara Summers, PhD:
Golly. I would like to say my style is transformational, that I want to inspire people to be at their very best and to come together around a vision for a preferred future and then move ahead in that direction. So, transformational, inspirational, aspirational, not transactional. I really don’t like the, you know, “If you do this for me, I’ll give you that. If you get this, then you’re going to get your merit increase.” I don’t think that that pays in the long run as a leader. I think that I have to constantly be a role model for the nurses in the organization. I have to carry myself as a leader when I’m in settings where I’m the only nurse, because I am. Whether I like it or not, I’m “the nurse.” So when people think about nursing, they’re not only going to think about nurses that they interact with every day, they’re going to look at me and say, “Well, how does she behave? How does she carry herself?” You know, I have to be a good role model for nursing. I have to be a good advocate for nurses and nursing too.
Recommended Citation
Summers, Barbara PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 5: Thinking about Leadership and Nurses as Self-Care Agents" (2014). Interview Chapters. 1242.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1242
Conditions Governing Access
Open
