Keynote Address

MAY 1990, VOL. 51, NO 5 AORN JOURNAL

Keynoter Prescribes Steps for Success

rigadier General Clara L. Adams-Ender, RN, MS, MMAS, CNAA, chief, Army B Nurse Corps, addressed nurses at the

Opening Session with a mixture of humor and determination. Her remarks were prefaced by a statement that garnered applause and laughter from the nurses assembled. She said that if there is reincarnation, she believes that OR nurses would come back as generals.

BG Adams-Ender received her baccalaureate in nursing from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, a master of science degree in nursing from the University of Minnesota, and a master of military art and science degree from the US Army Command and General Staff College. She graduated from the Command and General Staff College, Ft Leaven- worth, Kan, and the US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Penn.

BG Adams-Ender has held diverse assignments during her 29-year career such as chief nurse of two medical centers, assistant professor of nursing, Inspector General, and chief Army nurse recruiter. She was the chief of the department of nursing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washing- ton, DC, and is certified in advanced nursing administration by the American Nurses’ Associ- ation.

BG Adams-Ender has received the Legion of

Opposite: BG Clara Adam-Ender describes the chal- lenges to nurses in the 1990s (top). Carol Applegeet listens 10 Adam-Ender give the keynote address at Opening Session.

Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, the Army Commendation Medal, the coveted Surgeon General’s “A” professional designator for excellence in nursing administration, the Ray Wilkins Meritorious Service Award of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and has membership in the Order of Military Medical Merit. In 1967., BG Adarns-Ender became the first female in US Army history to qualify for and be awarded ithe Expert Field Medical Badge.

In her keynote address, Adams-Ender said that the 1990s will provide sufficient challenges to propel nursing into the 2lst century. Nurses will be affected by a booming global economy, global life-styles in which the world will become more cosmopolitan, and cultural naturalism in which traditions will become increasingly important. She predicted tbat the 1990s will be the decade of the women in leadership.

She explained that leaders will be faced with managing new kinds of employees who will possess more education, less loyalty to their employers and more loyalty to their personal growth, and who are willing to change careers to accomplish their goals. In quoting John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, authors of Megatrends 2000: Ten New Directions for the 19903, BG Adams-Ender said employees will change careers three to five times within their lifetimes. Leaders will be charged with managing results, rather than controlling people.

BG Adam-Ender said that the age of biology is now, and the ethical implications of biotech- nology are “profound.” Societal changes will make

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the individual more powerful than before. She said individuals will have more options and be more empowered. Individuals will be rewarded for their initiative.

Challenges of the 1990s

hallenges in the 1990s will include nursing C supply and demand. Both will be greater than before, according to BG Adams-Ender. Research has shown that 650,000 more nurses will be needed by the year 2000.

Global health care delivery systems will require nurses to be as comfortable practicing in Tokyo as in Toledo. The work world will be an employee market, according to BG Adams-Ender.

Nurses will be challenged to continue to define and communicate the mission of nursing, according to BG Adams-Ender. Nurses must “believe in themselves and then tell others what is worthwhile about their practices.”

BG Adams-Ender said that OR nurses practice in a high-technology environment. They must “be in step with automation. It is the wave of now, not the future.”

What Nurses Must Do

ive steps were proposed by BG Adams-Ender F that will enable nurses to handle health care changes. The first was handle frustration. Nurses deal with and handle frustration daily, and she said employers pay a great deal for people who can handle frustration. She suggested that nurses tell potential employers that they are experts in handling frustration. Then, nurses should be able to “set their prices accordingly.” There are two rules that nurses should remember when dealing with frustration, according to BG Adams-Ender. “Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.”

Nurses must learn to handle rejection because, she said, there is no real success without previous rejections. BG Adams-Ender said nurses must learn to handle financial pressure and not let it change their judgment or the way they work with others.

Learn how to handle complacency, she urged,

because comfort implies disaster. You must continue to keep growing and adding creativity. Most importantly, judge yourself by your goals, not by the goals set by others.

Finally, BG Adams-Ender urged attendees to always give more than they expect to receive. She said she learned a great deal about giving when she was a staff nurse taking care of terminally ill patients. They taught her to be sure to give what you can in a relationship, and to live each day as if it were your last. She said she learned another invaluable lesson from the alcoholic patients that she cared for. Because recovery from alcoholism is a day-to-day process, she said an important thing to learn is how to “fake it until you make it.”

Conclusion

n her closing, BG Adams-Ender quoted from I a current best-selling book by Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. She said it would be wonderful if colleagues could take a break of cookies and milk and then take an afternoon nap. She liked the lessons of always putting things back where you found them and cleaning up your own mess. Best of all, she said, we need to learn that “when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.”

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