As individuals and sometimes collectively, nurses can feel that we lack the ability to solve some of the wider challenges we face in our daily work.
Apollo is a resource which, with your feedback and suggestions, will continue to develop. Currently the focus of the Apollo resources is to enable you to speak up about your service, to be able to prepare supporting evidence to demonstrate the complexity of your service and to have the language to articulate the complexity of your role.
This article (PDF), discussing why advanced practice nurses are a good idea might help to inform your thoughts. You have expert skills and Apollo has a variety of resources which may be useful for you to ensure your expertise is valued, for as Red Adair said “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.”
Experiencing that we cannot do everything we need to do or wish to do can make us feel lacking in power and can have a negative impact upon ourselves and the service we provide. Apollo wants to help you to realise that actually you already have many of the skills and abilities needed to develop your service in exactly the way you want and to see it grow.
“The Apollo Nursing Resource website is a practical and valuable tool. It captures the very essence of what we do and allows us to turn this into a meaningful dialogue which will assist with service provision and development” Maddie White Colorectal Nurse Specialist, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust”
We believe that you only need some support and encouragement to help you address many of the problems that up to now may have frustrated you. Often it is the case that whilst you have gained a wide and deep knowledge of your specialty you have not had the same growth in managing all of the demands of being a specialist nurse.
Every day you use your skills and abilities in a very creative way to care for your patients and their families. You can also use these skills to confidently and successfully explain, develop and expand your service. You are a skilled and creative nurse – you would not be in your current position if you were not – Apollo wants to help you build on this creativity.
Sir Ken Robinson has said that “creativity is a bit like literacy, you may have an aptitude for it but never develop the abilities that are required to exercise it”. You have already shown that you can very successfully develop your clinical skills and with some assistance and practice you can also better develop your abilities in explaining and demonstrating the value and worth of the service you and your colleagues provide. Apollo is here to help you do that.