Abstract
Occupational and environmental health nurses should use insights to solve problems and promote worker health and safety.
Occupational and environmental health nurses may face challenges that require insight, or new ways to see. These challenges can involve how to mitigate hazards that cause worker injury or illness, allocate resources to achieve company goals without sacrificing health and safety programs, or expand health and safety services to meet changing needs of the workforce. Henry Miller (n.d.) wrote, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
To solve problems, occupational and environmental health nurses should use their own insights and encourage teams, such as the occupational health team or other work teams, to use their insights as well. Insight is needed when situations cause frustration and confusion so problems can be solved. Yet little is known about when, why, or how insights are formed—or what blocks them (Klein, 2013). “Insight problem-solving is often associated with the ‘aha’ experience” (Cunningham & MacGregor, 2014, p. 45) and viewed as a form of creativity. Gaining insights require “experience, an active stance, playful reasoning, and a willingness to question long-held assumptions and beliefs” (Pesut, 2014, para 3).
Strategies to develop insight are daydreaming, mood, location, application, and speed (Stone, 2014). Insight often comes from daydreaming when the mind wanders. Sometimes thinking less about a problem may bring the solution. Stone (2014) stated that “Some companies such as Google, Intuit, and Twitter expect their employees to take time for daydreaming about projects other than those they’re working on” (para 11; as cited in Waytz & Mason, 2013).
A positive mood contributes to more effective problem solving. If anxious, thinking is slower and creativity is stifled. To create a positive mood, consider activities to decrease anxiety and promote positive thinking such as watching comedies or playing games.
Location also influences insight. Sometimes a new environment will stimulate thinking and creativity. For some, going for a walk or run will clear the head so the mind will wander. For others, it is being somewhere quiet such as sitting and watching the sun rise or set. A new environment can create space for insight to occur.
When insights come, nurses should record them before they are forgotten. The aim is to apply the insight and solve the problem. If the insight cannot be used immediately, it can be easily retrieved for action later.
Insights should not be rushed. Time may be needed to take a break and relax the brain. For example, insights may just pop into the brain after taking a vacation compared with intense thinking about a nagging work problem the week prior.
Information also contributes to understanding and insight.
Occupational and environmental health nurses gain information by conducting worksite walkthroughs; asking questions of workers, supervisors, and other members of the occupational health team and listening to their responses; and analyzing data and identifying trends. Then nurses can think about what they have learned. Insights should then be applied to promote worker health and safety.
Footnotes
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author Biography
Susan A. Randolph, MSN, RN, COHN-S, FAAOHN is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Occupational Health Nursing Program, and Deputy Director of the North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center, at the University of North Carolina, Gillings School of Global Public Health, at Chapel Hill, NC. She is also a certified occupational health nurse and past president of the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses.