8 Mission-Based Projects to Help You Grow

Jumping into a mission-based project such as reducing your hospital’s carbon footprint or tackling food scarcity in your community is a new way for nurses to develop professionally in a far more personal and humanistic way.

This is something nurses are asking for in a post-COVID world, according to Nursing Coach Phyllis Quinlan, PhD, RN, NPD-BC. She’s known for helping nurses find inspiration and intention in their practice.

“Post-COVID nurses are more resilient and looking for growth as a person rather than just a role.”

The Practical Side of Doing Good

Beyond simply feeding your soul, rallying toward a common goal such as wellness, environmental sustainability, or DEI gives every team member a chance to bring their special gifts to the table, gifts that often transcend labels such as generation or experience, Quinlan explains.

It can also check a number of professional development boxes like building communication skills and collaborating with experts beyond the OR. An added bonus is a sense of connection that can encourage retention.

She likens this collaborative growth to how an athlete cross-trains to build endurance and strength. "Periop staff need to stay current on their clinical skills, but they also can become better clinicians by expanding their mindset about the person they are becoming—both professionally and personally.”

For these reasons, Quinlan suggests adding a mission-based approach to career development as not only valuable, but essential.

Explore Your Options

The most important focus a team can take when choosing a mission-based project is to look at where efforts can be most impactful for the unit, the facility, and the community.

Here are Quinlan’s top mission-based projects to inspire personal and team development:

1. Eliminating Smoke in the OR

This is a great project to create positive change that impacts every member of the team. It can put nurses in new collaborative circles such as with hospital administrators, infection preventionists and engineers. It can also help build new skills such as policy development.

2. Encouraging Voter Registration

Working together to help others register to vote can be a positive way for a periop team to connect with community members and each other to learn about and discuss an important civil activity. It can also help colleagues come together to focus more on the power of voting, rather than how someone votes.

3. Supporting Veterans in the Community

Looking at how to honor veterans can open new doors to understanding what this important part of the community needs and can give. It can also help a team uncover ways that veterans can bring their skills and knowledge into the hospital setting to support staff or simply provide human connection with patients.

4. Creating a Safe Patient Handling Campaign

Ergonomics is a much-needed focus in perioperative nursing to prevent staff from developing musculoskeletal injury. Teams can gain usable knowledge by exploring the research, sharing it with others and collaborating with vendors for any updates to assistive devices. They can also build team agreement and possibly even policy around standardizing support for high-risk occupational injury activities like positioning patients.

5. Educating about Obesity in Children

Today younger people, including periop patients, are experiencing very adult diseases such as diabetes and heart disease due to obesity. Perioperative professionals can share their expertise to connect with schools and community partners to help reduce childhood obesity rates in their own communities through healthy eating and getting moving (activities that help periop professionals, too).

6. Advocating Gun Safety Awareness

This can provide an opportunity to connect with emergency response experts to empower community members on improving gun safety awareness. This could be especially powerful coming from OR team members who respond to gunshot wounds, with a goal to give parents and children ideas for asking questions and driving conversations about gun safety within the community. 

7. Addressing Climate Change

Promoting environmental sustainability is a great way for teams to help their organization reduce its carbon footprint through campaigns such as sun panels to support clean energy, hardscaping to conserve water, and recycling activities to reduce OR-generated waste. It can also be a valuable way to research and communicate with stakeholders to help a facility seek out sustainable vendors doing their part for climate change.

8. Advancing Human Rights

The sky is the limit with opportunities for OR teams to support activities that promote basic human rights in healthcare and the community. A few places to start could be to …

• Encourage identity recognition with the creation of staff badges that include pronouns so patients can feel safe sharing their pronouns.
• Support geriatric patients by implementing age-specific supports such as for hearing or mobility.
• Reduce food insecurity by looking for ways to partner with a local college or community partner to create a food bank or stock an existing center.
• Encourage post-op care for patients without homes by working with local homeless shelters to create a privacy corner for telehealth.

Your membership entitles you to a free 60-minute coaching session with Phyllis.

Schedule with her today to discuss how you can develop professionally to meet your personal and professional goals.

Read More

• AORN’s Environmental Responsibility Position Statement (PDF)
• AORN Journal Environmental Stewardship: A Rallying Point for Sustainability (OR Excellence Award 2023)