Addressing Nurses' Professional Quality of Life: An Innovative Writing Workshop

Nurses' exposure to suffering reduces professional quality of life, negatively impacting patient outcomes, decreasing retention, and weakening the workforce. Tell Well is a creative writing workshop designed to address Professional Quality of Life. Through improvisation, text analysis, writing, and peer-critique, nine registered nurses built a writing practice that can be a self-care tool. A survey measured the extent to which participants integrated writing into their life and their perception of how their relationship with work changed. Tell Well honored nurses' experiences, provided a forum for them to express themselves and their experiences, and encouraged nurses to engage in self-care and discovery.