On the day before Valentine’s Day 2021, I look out my window at the beautiful snow on the ground while falling snow and ice create a scenic view of the woods and farmland around my house. As I ponder the experiences of nurses and other healthcare providers since our last Valentine’s Day – I am struck by the beautiful stories – even more beautiful than the snowy landscape – of these people comforting those in need around the world and how those stories reflect a love much greater than the popular intent of Valentine’s Day. This also reminds me of James Kouzes’ and Barry Posner’s bold thesis in a Journal of Business Ethics article from 1992 that “Love is the magnetic north on the leader’s ethical compass […] comprises transformational leadership, […] and constitutes the soul of ethical leadership.” (p. 480).

Kouzes and Posner continue by demonstrating how such leadership generates staff confidence, creates a desire to grow, transforms followers into leaders, and fosters people’s sense of purpose, fulfillment, and fun in their life. So who would have considered that as leaders, we are actually loving those we work with, care for, and report to?

In the EMU nursing department – at all levels of education – we emphasize that nurses are leaders in all they do, if they choose to accept the challenge. One’s role – whether one is a staff nurse or a nurse executive, or one’s practice setting – whether working in the geographic outreaches somewhere or in an urban tertiary care setting – all provide for nurses to demonstrate love. Leadership has more to do with making a difference in someone’s life rather than being a parade leader.

The EMU nursing philosophy describes that nurses demonstrate this leadership through the practice of agape love. Such love affirms the characteristics of leaders as described by Kouzes & Posner – listening deeply and empathetically to another, providing compassion through bearing other’s pain, emphasizing service first, advocating to right injustice, demonstrating the value of all, and communicating with honesty. Further, they cite Ferris who indicated “[…] there is a connection between love, trust, and energy. Felt love inspires trust, trust fosters a commitment to something other than the self, and these then foster creativity, commitment, and energy” (p.483).

Jesus role models this love as he comforts, heals, and serves. Most dramatically, he engages the outcast, dines with tax collectors, heals the leper on the Sabbath, and washes the feet of his disciples. How can we also demonstrate our love to those we report to, work with, or provide direction to through figuratively washing their feet? Washing the feet of students, colleagues, and patients daily through all I do continues to challenge me.

Over the years as well as most recently, I have also been challenged that love as a nurse and human being also includes loving those whose life stories, responses to life events, and worldviews contrast with mine. This could be patients, students, colleagues, employees, supervisors, spiritual leaders, or even neighbors. Jesus serves as the role model here as well when he said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44 NIV). I would hope to believe these are not enemies. Almost 20 years ago, Chip Anderson – professor at Fresno Pacific University at that time – called us as faculty to see persons through lens as God sees them. While I have not been consistent with this invitation, I am continually called and strive to see others through God’s eyes. Thus, loving them as God loves them. Are you also willing to so love others?

Such leadership love can emerge in any setting –

• comforting a new parent;
• consoling someone in isolation;
• grieving with a fellow worker who lost a family member;
• encouraging staff about a new procedure;
• walking with a student as they choose a different profession or through a challenging time;
• sheltering someone struggling with depression or abuse; or
• inspiring someone to create a new nursing model.

The greatest payment for serving as a nursing faculty is hearing how our graduates and current students offer this love around the world in all kinds of settings and circumstances. Then I hear how those nurses inspire others to love – and the idea of leadership love then literally spreads around the world similar to throwing pebbles into a pond. Multiple ripples intersect and spread over a wide reach of the water. Love can spread to the far reaches of the world from one toss.

I am old enough to remember with fondness Dionne Warwick singing the Burt Bacharach song “What the world needs now, is love sweet love…” That song might sound shallow or sentimental – but really – that is exactly what everyone all over the world needs in this year of illness, violence, racism, isolation, and loss. In addition, so many people have worked tirelessly in health care, education, service industry, and factory settings – who all need a strong gift of love from their leaders. May we all as leaders be challenged this Valentine’s season to give love to those around us.

With love….from EMU nursing. Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

Here at EMU, we have, along with many other nursing programs around the country, worked constantly to readjust, reschedule and rethink how we can best provide nursing education to our students while living through a global pandemic. One of the many benefits of being a small, close knit program, is that we can change our plans and try new things more quickly and easily.  We have added additional virtual and in-person simulation experiences for students. We have learned to have class online and in-person while remaining distanced and masked.  We have leaned heavily on our strong partnerships with local clinical agencies to provide our students with as many hands-on, in-person clinical hours as possible.  

We have recognized the incredibly historic moment that we are all living through and provided opportunities for our students to safely be a part of the Covid response.  Students have cared for patients in acute care settings, as they always do, but we have also had students administering Covid-19 tests, helping answer calls through the local health department’s Covid-19 hotline, and this Spring semester, we will be on the front lines of the massive Covid-19 vaccination rollout by giving vaccinations to our community with the local health department.

EMU teaches students to care for patients’ whole selves.  This past year, we worked to apply that approach to our interactions with each other; to care for each others’ whole selves.  Many of our faculty and students have taught and learned while also caring for children or loved ones at home.  We have found new and creative ways to connect with our students through zoom “coffee chats” or outside visits.  Faculty have actively sought out input from students as we make schedule changes that impact them.  We have practiced stress reduction strategies and have taken lots of deep breaths, together.  Grace has been extended in all directions and we have given and received words of encouragement, affirmation and support.  

As I look ahead to this Spring with hope, I am grateful for the work we have done together.  I am proud of the nurses EMU is sending out into the world.  Nurses who believe in science and whose practice is rooted in evidence.  Nurses who recognize the interconnectedness of individual choices, family dynamics and community/public health.  Nurses who understand that we must first care for ourselves if we hope to care for others.

This past year has been hard, but together, nurses can do hard things.

A. Kate Clark DNP RN PHNA-BC

Assistant Professor of Nursing

EMU