I Announced It Before I Knew How

One of the hardest parts of building something new is saying it out loud before you know exactly how it will happen.

In this episode, Dr. Wendy shares the fears, uncertainty, and courage behind publicly announcing the Connecticut Nurse Wellness Project—and why waiting for perfect confidence often keeps us from creating meaningful change.

You'll learn:

How fear shows up during big ideas

Why action creates clarity

The importance of public accountability

How courage grows through momentum

Connect with the movement:

📩 Join the CT Nurse Wellness Project Newsletter for exclusive updates, resources, and opportunities to get involved.

🌐 Visit: www.ctnursewellnessproject.com/events

▶️ Follow Dr. Wendy Garvin Mayo on YouTube for weekly conversations on nurse wellness, leadership, emotional intelligence, and building initiatives that transform healthcare. https://www.youtube.com/@drwendygarvinmayo

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Nurse Wellness Podcast, the CT Nurse Wellness Project Edition. I'm your host, Dr. Wendy Garvino, and I'm excited to be here with you today. What happens when you have the right people at the table but no blueprint? That was the question I had to deal with when I first formed the advisory board. So when I started the CT Nurse Wellness Project, the first thing I did was market it. I had to put it out there in the world that I had this big vision of moving the needle on nurse wellness at a statewide level. And as I started marketing this big idea, this big vision on social media and my email list, people started to reach out to inquire, what is this? What are you doing? And to be honest with you, it was really scary because it was a vision I had. And like I said, there was no blueprint, but I knew it was the right thing to do. And I also knew that it was important to build my tribe, so to speak, and to get people to one, see the vision, buy into the vision. So I was able to develop an advisory board of 15 members of amazing women. That was not intentional, but we have nurse leaders, we have student nurses, we have retired nurses, we even have a physician's assistant, as I said in the last episode. So we had these individuals who were just excited to be a part of this initiative despite not having a blueprint. So I was very honored that they signed on to this project, to this idea without an initial plan. And for me, that was a lot of weight to carry because I had the idea and I didn't have a plan like a rolled-out plan. I would say a solid plan as to what we would do. So here we are with this big idea out there in the world. We have people brought into the idea, and my advisory board members are individuals from academia, um, healthcare organizations, and uh public health. So we we have a nice mix, even home care. So what I did is I said, great, we have individuals who signed on. Now, how do we get organizations to sign on and buy into this vision of moving the needle on nurse wellness at a statewide level? So I started to reach out to various organizations, nursing organizations, particularly in Connecticut to one pitch my big idea on moving the needle on nurse wellness. And uh some organizations were like, huh, I don't know, you know, didn't want to quite co-sign it, which is fine, totally understandable. However, we had a couple of um organizations that signed right on without any question. So the Central Connecticut Oncology Nursing Society was one of the first organizations to sign on. And then we had the Northern Connecticut Black Nurses Association also sign on. And I was ecstatic about that. And then I started to think, well, I want to really hone in on the mental health and well-being of nurses. So it would be nice to have a mental health professional or practice also sign on. So Better Days Counseling Services was another organization that signed on to this big idea. And then, of course, my organizations and practices also supported um the CT Nurse Wellness Project, and that is the stress blueprint as well as collaborative cancer care. So we laid the foundation. We had 15 individuals and we had five organizations who were on board with this initiative, this big idea, and that was great. So then for me, as the founder of the CT Nurse Wellness Project, I had to do some thinking about, okay, what's the mission? What are the values? So I laid all that out. We we had a website, but more importantly, you know, the scientists came out in me because I'm saying, like, okay, we want to move the needle on nurse wellness in Connecticut, but what's the temperature on nurse wellness in Connecticut? So I started to look for data on nurse wellness in the state of Connecticut, and I couldn't find any. And I met with some um organizations um here in Connecticut to see if they had any data, and no one had data on nurse wellness. So that's where the CT State of Nurse Wellness survey came into play because we needed data. How are we gonna move the needle on something when we don't even have a pulse on what's going on with nurses in the state of Connecticut? The American Nurses Association, they do a survey every year, and they did have data on nurses in Connecticut, but it was only 70 nurses. They were able to capture 70 nurses in their well-being survey that they did uh a couple of years ago. And for me, that wasn't enough to really tell the story about what was going on with nurses in Connecticut. So the decision was we'll launch the survey, get a pulse on nurse wellness in our state. And this was really good because in the research, it shows that, you know, organizations will do engagement surveys and they may have some wellness questions on there. And there's always a question about our nurses being transparent or honest on those surveys. And the data says no, because it's their organization, and you believe that, um, or we believe, because I was also in that position, that they can find out who is taking the survey, right? The survey usually comes to your email, you open it up, you're taking it, your uh employee ID is attached to it. So doing a statewide survey was a really good idea because the data is is clean in terms of nurses, it can be very transparent. And when I decided to um create the survey, I needed qualitative data as well as quantitative data. That that was very important. That's what I knew I needed. So I started to craft questions related to workplace violence, wellness, sleep, uh, sustainability of staying in the profession. And the qualitative questions, the one that I thought was very important, and I still think is important to this day, is what do you want leaders to know? And we have so much data on um what nurses want leaders to know, and that data will be shared with healthcare leaders. So I'm working on the survey, um, I was able to put that together and I didn't want to make it too long because you know, I'm a nurse too, and I understand time is very important to us. So I wanted the survey to be short, but I wanted it to be impactful once we actually received the data. So that's where the whole CT state of nurse wellness survey came from is that there was no data. So we said we have to uh create the data. So now the CT Nurse Wellness Project, we own the data to nurse wellness in the state of Connecticut. So that that is great. I'm very proud of that. That um, you know, this initiative owns the data and we're able to share out that data with um healthcare organizations and nurses and policymakers so everyone understands what's going on at a state level. Uh it's it's very, very, very important. So in December, um, I decided that okay, there's a lot of interest in the CT Nurse Wellness Project online. People were emailing me, sending me private messages. And something told me that we need to have an event. Now, now, this is out of nowhere, right? Because we started the CT Nurse Wellness Project in uh November. And I said, we need to have an event in January, right? Because the new year was coming, everyone's excited, people were going on vacation and uh leaving for the holidays. So coming back, like we need to have an event. So we put it out there that we're gonna have an event um called the state of nurse wellness. And this was a national global event where everyone was invited to talk about nurse wellness, the state of nurse wellness just in the nation or around the globe. And we had a panelist of individuals, nurse leaders, and nurse advocates. Many of them uh were from Connecticut. We had Dr. Stacey Bentle, who is the director of nursing services with the CT Department of Children and Families. She's also the CEO of Bental Healthcare Consulting. We had Dr. Tina Losarte Rodriguez, who's the executive director of the CT Center for Nursing Workforce. We had Tanya Abrue, who is the CEO and co-founder of Power Up Nursing. We had Dr. Maria Kroll, who was the executive director of health care programs at Southern Connecticut University School of Nursing at the time. We had Dr. Tori Murtha, who was the director of patient services, ambulatory oncology, SMILO from Yale New Haven Hospital. And then it was me. I was facilitating a discussion. The State of Nurse Wellness Roundtable was well attended. We had over 130 people sign up and log on. It was an amazing event. And from that round table, we also received a lot of data on issues that were happening around the nation. And that is when we launched a survey. So following that roundtable at the end of that webinar, we launched a CT State of Nurse Wellness uh survey. We told people about it, and then we started marketing it online. And here is the essential point in all of this. So when we first started the CT Nurse Wellness Project, I said that we got the advisory board together. We also had buy-in from some organizations to nursing organizations and then a mental health um organization. So launching the survey, it was a team effort. I didn't launch a survey independently. I launched a survey with the help of the advisory board members as well as the nursing organizations. So collectively, we all launched this survey and it was impactful. We had this whole campaign going on with 60 days, 600 voices. We wanted 600 nurses to really take the survey. We ended up with 483, which is also good. But we we launched a survey and we just started uh marketing it. Uh, we send it out to our email list, shared it with our friends. Uh, we did some live uh videos online to market this survey. And that was a big chunk of time because we launched a survey over two months and we were just watching the data come in, looking at the data. Ultimately, the data is going to drive our next step. So we couldn't really do too much until we actually had the data. So when you don't have a blueprint and you have people at the table, you have to just keep them engaged, keep them updated, keep them thinking, ask their opinion. Because ultimately, when you have a vision without a blueprint, you bring the individuals to the table to help you create the blueprint to innovate the vision. But you have to give them the opportunity to do that. And that's what we did while we waited for the data. The advisory board and myself, we still met, we still talked about various things. We debriefed on the round table because that was also data. And we focused on trying to get more people to buy in to this vision. So you don't need to have all the answers or all the pieces. Things unfold, but you have to make sure that you have the right people at the table who will stay there with you and help you birth or shape the vision and encourage you to keep going and remain at the table even when there's so many question marks or so many unknowns. So that's why team is so important when you have an idea that's going into an initiative. You have to have the right people at the table. So if you are working on an initiative or you have an idea that you want to transition into an initiative, make sure you have the right people at your table. And remember that you don't need to have all the answers right away. As long as you have a vision and that vision is going to impact other lives, people will come and join you. They will buy into your vision. And I know it can be very scary to have a vision without a blueprint, and even scarier to reach out to people to ask them to come to the table to support this vision that doesn't have a plan. But the right people will come and your vision will be executed. But you have to take the first step and share the vision. Don't keep it to yourself. Keeping it to yourself does not help anyone. And many times our ideas, our visions, our initiatives for us, but not about us. It's about the people who are waiting for you just to execute the vision, to just put it out there, put it out in the universe so it could start manifesting and people can have the opportunity to join you at the table. Because sometimes you don't even have to engage people. People will engage you if you are courageous enough to put the vision out there. So this episode, I wanted to challenge you to put it out there. Even if you're scared, do it scared. But people need to know what you're thinking so they can join you. Give them the opportunity to join you on the mission to change more lives. Until next time, remember initiatives inspire, but initiatives change lives. So make sure that you let your idea out into the world, let it become an initiative so it can impact more lives because people are waiting on what you have. To learn more about the CT Nurse Wellness Project, go to CTNursewellnessproject.com to learn more about our initiative, our advisory board. And we do have an event coming up on August 8th. That is when we are going to be releasing our data from the CT State of Nurse Wellness Survey. But more importantly, we will be launching some statewide initiatives that have never been done before. So if you want to join us, you can join us in person or you can join us virtually. Go to CT State of Nurse Wellness.com backslash events. We are also having a national hum sponsored by Humnet on August 8th at 8 p.m. You can go to that same website and register for the hum. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week.