BE BOLD Ms. Bartholomew's book, "The Dauntless Nurse: Communication Confidence Builder."

Are you a dauntless nurse? You are if you speak up when patients are in jeopardy, if "first, do no harm" is a personal conviction, and if you stand up to intimidating surgeons and colleagues. It takes both skill and courage to be dauntless on a daily basis. You'll learn how to develop both by attending "The Dauntless Nurse," a confidence-building session by nationally known speaker and former surgical manager Kathleen Bartholomew, RN, MN. You'll walk away with the skills needed to communicate professionally, assertively and effectively when the stakes and stress levels are highest.

Defining dauntless. If you want a team that will support and nurture each other and keep your patients safe, you need nurses who are dauntless. They must consider every person in their department a team member, they don't join in the blame game when something goes wrong and they routinely ask peers for feedback. They work out problems with co-workers instead of running to their managers, use words to communicate instead of eye rolls or sighs, and create a space where others feel safe to disagree.

No harm? Really? The reason 440,000 patients die unnecessarily every year due to medical errors is that healthcare professionals don't have the courage to reveal their mistakes. The same errors reoccur time and again across the country. If that many people died at once, the public would be outraged. It would be like watching the evening news and seeing 3 Boeing 747s crash every day for a year.

Kathleen Bartholomew, RN, MN

National speaker for the nursing profession for more than a decade.

Former manager of a 57-bed surgical unit at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.

Authored books on improving physician-nurse communication and ending nurse-to-nurse hostility.

Communication and teamwork matter. Most healthcare professionals are good people who want to do the right thing, but unfortunately they believe that "bad stuff just happens" once in a while because they're human. That's not why. Bad stuff happens because they don't function with a high level of teamwork. One way to tell if you truly function at the highest possible level of teamwork is if everyone feels safe to speak the truth. That's often not the case. Recent studies show that nurses assess a situation and decide if having a tough conversation is worth the risk of facing personal and professional consequences, and usually decide that it's not. More nurses need to have the courage to speak up when something seems amiss.

Promote healthy communication. Dauntless nurses create a healthy and productive workplace when they speak up and agree as a team to communicate professionally and constructively. They don't join in when someone talks about another person who isn't present and they offer to assist other team members who are drowning in work. They routinely compliment colleagues, ensure everyone's opinions are valued and respected, and make it clear that no one should hesitate to ask a question about something they don't understand. OSM