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They host small dinner meetings at local restaurants where they recruit area nurses to speak. Each meeting has about 25 people who attend who they want to recruit to the chapter.
At the last dinner meeting a large hospital sent 20 nurses to attend. During the meeting the president asked the attendees this question:
“If money were no object, what is one thing this chapter could do that would benefit the nurses in our community to provide the best possible care to our patients? We’ll give you five minutes to think about it and then we want to hear your ideas — no matter how crazy or outlandish you think they might be — we want to hear them all!”
As the nurses began to think about it and talk amongst themselves, a steady buzz started around the room. You could see and feel the excitement that was being generated.
After the five minutes were up, everyone who had an idea shared it with the group — idea sharing only; no discussions about why or why not. Each idea was captured on paper.
After everyone shared their ideas, the president asked for volunteers to meet the next week to review and categorize the ideas, and then brainstormed ways to possibly make them happen, with the promise to share the outcome of that work with everyone so they could vote for their top choices. Several chapter members and seven nurses from the large hospital volunteered for the task.
From this exercise, a new annual plan was developed by and for the chapter.
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