LAUSR

In our 2018 Creative Nursing exploration of Cornerstones of Healing, we have advocated for Finding Meaning, Advancing Quality and Safety, and Living in the Code of Ethics. This fourth issue depicts how our profession, and we as individuals, can master situations of limited resources (which is to say, almost all situations) in ways that are insightful, mature, and well organized, and that arise from an attitude of abundance rather than an attitude of scarcity. The title of this editorial is from Gervase Bushe, quoted in “Unleashing Hidden Team Resources: Time and Talents” by our guest editor, Heidi Orstad, who describes using a process of Appreciative Inquiry to address an organizational retrenchment. Appreciative Inquiry, instead of beginning with a focus on The Problem, begins by asking, “What is going right? What is working well?” Bushe’s quote, cited in the article, is, “Appreciative Inquiry is a collective inquiry into the best of what is, in order to imagine what could be, followed by collective design of a desired future state.” What are these situations of limited resources in which we find ourselves? In a new feature we inaugurate in this issue, called From the Archive, in an article from 2009, “A Brief Compendium of Curious and Peculiar Aspects of Nursing Resource Management” (Creative Nursing Vol. 15 #2), our journal’s founding editor Marie Manthey says that one of the first things student nurses learn is how to assess a patient’s care needs. We learn that lesson well, which is one reason why nurses are so valuable in so many different settings. But nursing will never be able to completely control workload; we will always be responding to resource needs initiated by other forces. What kinds of resources are we talking about? Finances. Personnel (staffing). Time. Energy. Positional power. But other resources that are often underappreciated and underused are personal skills, traits, or habits: Creativity. Leadership. Civility. Tolerance for ambiguity. Appreciation for heterogeneity. Intentional use of self. Care of self. What special qualities do you have? How can you use these qualities to meet the needs of patients and families, your co-workers, and your community? This issue of Creative Nursing inspires us to seek out strengths – the best of what is – and apply them, in clients’ and families’ homes; in primary schools, community centers, and senior living facilities; in in-patient units and out-patient clinics, family support groups, and schools of nursing. Marty Lewis-Hunstiger, BSN, RN, MA, is a retired pediatric nurse and preceptor, editor of Creative Nursing, copy editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, and an affiliate faculty member at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing in Minneapolis, Minnesota.