Kimberly Long 0:00

Hello, everyone. We are honored to have Dr. Roseanne Russo with us today. She is editor-in-chief of Nursing Management Journal. She's also adjunct professor at Francis Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University. And she is a board member at large for AONL. Welcome, Dr. Russell.

Rosanne Raso 0:21

Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here. I can't wait to hear what you want to know.

Kimberly Long 0:26

Oh, we're excited to hear your responses too. So let's start out with can you walk us through your journey to executive leadership and if there are any defining moments that shape that trajectory for you?

Rosanne Raso 0:39

All right. Well, I'm celebrating my 50th year as a nurse this year. So that's not a short journey. And I was originally like I'm an associate degree grad, so you know, it's all the hard way for me. It was a long journey. And my master's was in education with a focus on education because I loved teaching within the hospital. I loved clinical, I loved teaching people about clinical, mentoring, precepting, all that kind of stuff. So I am the clinical nurse specialist of the CCU at the New York Hospital. And there's a job posted for, and this I forgot exactly what the title was, but assistant director of nursing for critical care. It was a new position. They never had a critical care department before. So I'm like, okay, you know, I wonder who that's going to be. Well, they tap me on the shoulder and said, we want you to apply. And so my whole career journey really changed. That was a defining moment. And it taught me that like doors open and you have to walk through them. I mean, unless it really feels wrong. Like that was really a leadership lesson and a defining career moment for me. So it turns out I love leadership and management and being able to influence in a different way. And I just keep moving up the ladder. So uh my first chief nurse job was 120-bed hospital. I spoke to my chief nurse when I was debating whether to take it or not and said, does this really count to be the chief nurse of 100? And I was so used to these academic medical centers. And she's like, Yes, it counts, and you should take this. So I just progressed along 100, 200 beds, 400 beds. Lennox Hill was 500 beds. And my last chief nursing officer job was for New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell. And I was there for eight years and through COVID. Talk about defining career moments. Oh my goodness, leading through COVID was really something. But let's not go there because we'll never talk about anything else. And along that way, I was a late doctoral student. I got my DNP actually in 2020, the COVID year. So I was uh a late bloomer for a doctoral degree. And I thought, oh, what could I learn more at this point? Well, it turns out a lot. And it opened me up to research. I ended up doing a whole lot of research projects with Case Western on topics of interest to me, healthy work environment and authentic leadership, and learned how to combine theory and research and practice. So just getting my DP was honestly a defining moment as well. And then being inducted into the academy is a defining moment, which I thought was the proudest moment of my career until I took uh Will Cornell to Magnet, their initial magnet designation. And that moment when the auditorium is full, I'm in a premier academic medical center that had never been magnet before. The joy, the pride, it was the proudest moment of my career bringing them to Magnet, honestly. And it's not about magnet, it's not about the credential, it's about the journey. It's about shared decision making and healthy work environments and new knowledge and transformational leadership. It's really about living all those things and having a culture that lives all those things.

Kimberly Long 4:14

It's good. That sounds so fascinating. And, you know, it sounded like you had so much in each of those environments to try to navigate. What process do you use to navigate competing priorities or things that everything is important, but you have to figure out where to put energy, where to put resources. What process do you use to navigate that?

Rosanne Raso 4:38

I'm not sure I ever really had a process. I just plowed through. But you have to do, you have to do the things for your job. Like that is, but I had so much going on in my professional life outside of the job. I was on the editorial board of nursing management. I became the editor-in-chief of nursing management. I was active in professional organizations, president of the state ONL, et cetera, et cetera. And that was on top of the job. Then I added, you know, going to school on that. So anyway, how did I handle that? Well, there was a couple of years that I didn't watch a minute of television because there was literally no time for it, which is not necessarily good advice for the listeners to get yourself so overburdened that you don't have time to live. But you do what you can do and what feels right. And the job has to come first, of course. But your own well-being, and well-being doesn't necessarily mean health. Health obviously comes important. And I always had time to go to a yoga class on the weekends, and I always had time for a massage once a month. Like I made time for that. That was part of dealing with competing priorities, is that you have to be healthy. And I made time for family. That's part of being healthy. But some things you can delegate more, some things you can schedule to do in the future and doesn't have to be done now. Some things you don't have to do at all. Just because you're CC'd on an email doesn't mean you have to compose a response. You're CC'd, it's not going to you. So, like deciding what's urgent, what can wait, what's urgent, what you have to do now. And for me, managing it also meant that I I had to set deadlines for myself. Like I couldn't wait to the last minute on everything. It would make me too stressed. So my own personal health is really part of dealing with all of that. And that was not waiting for the last minute for things because that would blow my mind. I don't know if I answered the question, but there's probably more than what I did.

Kimberly Long 6:42

You did indeed. Absolutely. And now, with everything that's going on with our government and things that are happening that are impacting health care, how in your expertise and exposure can nursing leaders more effectively influence legislation and regulatory decisions that impact nursing and health care? How can we get our voice out there?

Rosanne Raso 7:06

Oh, there's a couple of ways, and it's one of the things I love to do, honestly. So within your own organization, there's a government relations department. Get to know them, find out what's happening within healthcare. They are a font of information, and they need your input in terms of the organizational position on certain things as well. So I would definitely become close colleagues with government relations. Also, your professional organizations. So I have lobbied through New York ONL, Greater New York ONL, and through AONL. I have lobbied at the local, regional, and national levels with those organizations. So get involved. They all have some kind of advocacy committee group. Join your professional organization, get involved there. You learn a lot and they help grease the path for you on what you need to do. So I now, my local congressperson, I have an email thing going with her ledge aid on healthcare. When something comes up, I'm like, you know, hey, you know, Title II reauthorization is was just introduced on the floor. Uh could you make sure she supports this? Or, oh, that tragedy, which is literally not over yet, of nursing not being a professional degree. That was another one to get close involved with. And there's others too, you know, within the state, there's always different things within the state. And then at a national level, where things move much more slowly, there's national issues as well, like funding and the Save Act for workplace safety. And I could go on and on about advocacy, but through professional organizations, your government relations people, and getting to know your local congress person, you can make a difference.

Kimberly Long 9:02

Absolutely. Dr. Russell, thank you so much for taking some time to share your expertise and wisdom with us. I value your time and the information that you've provided, and I know that the listeners will get great benefit from it. So thank you so much. You're welcome.