DISRUPTing AORN and RWJ Barnabas Health System (Part 5)

OVERALL, I found the learning experience: positive, engaging, and motivating. Good and helpful. Very interactive, educational, very informative, and eye opening. Very valuable, very informative, inspiring. Rewarding, educational, interesting but it could have been more focused and succinct.

These are some of the feedback provided by the participants at the the DISRUPTing AORN and RWJ Barnabas Health System event held in New Brunswick, New Jersey in January 2019.

Based on FWN’s book entitled DISRUPT 3.0. Filipina Women: Rising, Myrna Young (FWN100(tm) GLOBAL 2017) spearheaded the leadership development event as part of a continuing education program for nurse practitioners and emerging leaders.

AORN is the Association of peri-Operative Registered Nurses, the world’s largest association for perioperative nurses. RWJ Barnabas Health System provides communities and patients convenient access to high-quality, cost-efficient, coordinated healthcare in the state of New Jersey.

Myrna Young is a nursing education specialist at the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) University Hospital in New Jersey, USA. She further feeds her passion for helping people through community outreach and mentoring staff, colleagues, and students. Myrna surrounds herself with high-caliber talent, as in the FWN, the RWJUH nursing leadership and colleagues, and the Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society; she also volunteers her time with the Jose P. Rizal International Foundation Inc., the March of Dimes, PIDCI, and various food banks.

Myrna details her experiences in her chapter about “Big Dreams, Broken Glass” in DISRUPT 3.0. Filipina Women: Rising. The book is available on.ffwn.org/DISRUPT.

For the workshops, Myrna highlighted the challenges she faced while growing up in an overseas environment, including pressure from family to succeed and to be at the top, peer pressure and micro-aggressions, such as being labeled as stupid, butt kisser, push over, and sucker. These are the same challenges faced by Filipina women leaders.

As an emerging leader, Myrna faced major financial investment losses and bankruptcy, racial discrimination and sexual harassment. When she finally succeeded in the nursing environment, a career change from being expert to novice presented new challenges of learning new knowledge and skills. Myrna felt the lack of mentors hindered her leadership development. Nowadays, Myrna considers it a privilege to mentor emerging leaders in the health profession, both men and women, regardless of race and color.

Maria Beebe (US FWN100(tm) 2011 and Global FWN100(tm) 2013), the book’s editor, joined Myrna at the workshops to provide the back story and the conceptual framework for the FWN leadership series. DISRUPT 3.0. Filipina Women: Rising celebrates Filipina women who have emerged as global leaders despite challenges, failures, and setbacks.

The purpose of DISRUPT 3.0 is similar to the purpose of DISRUPT 1.0 and DISRUPT 2.0, and that is to inspire, motivate, and nurture not only Filipina women but also non-Filipina women worldwide whose success has been limited. These are women who have leadership responsibilities in cross-cultural and global situations and leadership positions in the diaspora. The explicit goal of the book is to teach leadership not only to inform but also to transform.

When each author was asked what three words best describe her, the top words chosen in 2016 were leader, passionate, global, community; and, in 2018, the top words were passionate and compassionate.

The participants shared the following takeaways from the leadership workshops: practicing what I preach, not letting obstacles get in the way, becoming more creative, mentoring, being a productive preceptor in the long run, challenging the status quo, and sharing ideas with my peers. Moreover, fail a little, deal mindfully with any obstacles I will encounter with my everyday life and that will encourage me to do better and make a difference as a nurse leader.

As for next steps, the participants said: find opportunities to lead in my unit, keep on progressing, stay open to future advancements, incorporate being a servant leader into my practice, develop leadership qualities, develop a positive relationship with peers, continue being mindful, and validate others as it reinforces the leadership that I need to focus and develop.