I would like to introduce our new JNPD board member and column editor for the Ask the Leader column, Dr. Dennis Doherty. Dr. Doherty is a senior professional development specialist, nursing professional development specialist at Boston Children's Hospital, where he oversees nursing orientation programming, leads the Evidence-based Practice Mentorship Program, and facilitates leadership development workshops. Dennis started his nursing career in 2001, working many years caring for patients and families in Boston Children's pediatric intensive care unit. He advanced to the highest clinical ladder level and served in the charge nurse role. Dennis has worked as adjunct faculty for several Boston-area colleges of nursing. Over the last decade, Dennis has been an advocate for creating healthy work environments and has studied, presented, and published on healthy work environments in numerous forums. Dennis earned a PhD in nursing in 2021 from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He is board certified in Nursing Professional Development and has been an active Association for Nursing Professional Development member since 2015 serving on the 2019 and 2020 convention content planning committees, mentoring in the Evidence-based Practice Academy, and presenting at convention including the 2020 convention opening session panel Leveraging the Past to Create a Bright Future. Dr. Doherty was featured in our Ask the Leader March/April 2021 column (Doherty, 2021), I asked Dr. Doherty to describe why he was interested in becoming the editor of the Ask the Leader column, and he explained:
I transitioned into nursing professional development in 2014 and pretty early on became very interested in leadership development. We hear people say things like, "nurses are leaders," but I saw a substantial gap between this call to lead and how I see nurses lead (or not lead). I was asking myself, "Are we effectively preparing nurses to lead?" and I determined there was a need to do more. I pursed leadership development opportunities through professional development programs and academic courses. Leading is foundational to the NPD Scope and Standards and we are all on our own leadership journey. I feel highlighting leaders in NPD is an important and practical way to explore leadership in our specialty is important and can inspire us along our leadership journey.
Dr. Doherty described his vision for the column:
Earlier in 2021, I learned about this TikTok trend called the "Tell Me Challenge." Using video, people will respond to a prompt "tell me you ____, without telling me you____." They are often funny in nature, but I think it is an interesting self-reflection question. Tell me you are a leader without telling me you are a leader. Basically it is asking to show the evidence rather than just make the claim that one is a leader. I am think this might be interesting to incorporate a question like this into the Ask the Leader column.
Dr. Doherty has many more creative and exciting ideas planned for this column. I am looking forward to working with Dr. Doherty and the future of the Ask the Leader column.
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