Susan E. Mazer, Ph.D. Blog

Thoughts and ideas on healthcare

Hi, and welcome to my blog! I'm Susan E. Mazer -- a knowledge expert and thought leader on how the environment of care impacts the patient experience. Topics I write about include safety, satisfaction, hospital noise, nursing, care at the bedside, and much more. Subscribe below to get email notices so you won't miss any great content.

Nurses Caring in Crisis and Conflict: We Celebrate You, And All Nurses

May 11, 2018

The professionalism and dedication of nursing began in times of war. Florence Nightingale and her team of 35 nurses confronted a 42% mortality rate in the Crimea in the 1800s. They saved lives and struggled to change a conservative medical system. Their work reduced the mortality rate to 2%. In keeping with that tradition, today’s

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The State of Nursing Outside of the U.S.

January 26, 2018

There was a great story in the Guardian this week about a nurse who moved from Canada to work in the UK. Basically, she described her position in the UK as one of blanket obedience. Everything that a nurse needed to do beyond practical matters required the approval or direct action of a physician. And,

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Why the Work Environment of Nurses Matters

October 27, 2017

Having just returned from the ANCC Magnet conference, I am again aware of how the majority of healthcare consumers have very little idea how nurses think, what they do to protect their patients, how they find places of vulnerability where patients are at risk, and how critical their ongoing research is to community and family health.

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Living the Life of a Nurse

May 12, 2017

This past summer I was on the faculty of a retreat in California for Oncology nurses. It was a three-day weekend event, drawing nurses from Northern, Southern, and Central California. The retreat was all about self-care, about defining and recovering from burnout — about living the life of a nurse. A nurse at the retreat

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Where is Nursing in the Patient Experience?

January 27, 2017

This question came to me as an “ah ha” moment as I was a member of a faculty doing a retreat for oncology nurses last summer. Basically, when I started to talk about the patient experience and HCAHPS, the nurses’ eyes glazed over and they looked confused. They knew little to nothing about the patient

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The Sacred Work of Nurses is Done Everyday, Everywhere

May 6, 2016

“A nurse is anyone who is entrusted with the health of another.” Florence Nightingale wrote this at a time when the act of nursing was done by domestic labor, religious women, or family members. Not yet a profession, nursing was a role, a set of tasks. It was Nightingale’s mission to elevate not only the role of

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What Nurses Do in the Midst of Terror

November 20, 2015

With the attacks in Russia, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and France, and continuing conflict in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, we are focusing on the victims and the terrorists, but behind the scenes are hundreds of nurses who are caring for the injured as they worry about their own families. When Florence Nightingale went to the Turkey

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What Represents Nursing Excellence?

October 16, 2015

Since Florence Nightingale established nursing as a profession with its own standards of practice in the 1800s, nursing has continued to mature and push for improving the quality of care for patients. This is not about trends or traditions, though. Rather, every nurse takes on the role of primary caregiver to each patient whose health is under his

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The Power of Healing is the Nurse

May 8, 2015

Telling the story of nursing is like telling the story of everyone who has been ill, been in an accident, or has held a vigil at the bed of a loved one whose last moment shall never be forgotten. Almost every one of us has been touched by a nurse, starting with the day we

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Staff Burnout in Healthcare: Authenticity as the Antidote

April 17, 2015

So much discussion and concern about staff burnout in healthcare. So many definitions and descriptions. Actually, an entire symptomology of burnout has been written, rewritten, analyzed, and then written again. And, yet, for someone who is actually burned out, reading all of the details does nothing but justify the burnout. For nurses, especially, burnout is

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