An optimist's guide for cultivating civility among academic nurses

Nurse educators yearn to teach in zestful workplaces where faculty and administrators work and play well together. Even when their interactions with professional colleagues are stressful, many still believe that zestful academic workplaces are possible. How can educators bridge the gap when a zestful ideal becomes a stressful reality? Since some report that the quality of their professional relationships differentiates stressful from zestful workplaces, relationships are a good place to start. The findings from an emerging body of social and biological research concur that human beings are a nurturing species wired for relationship. Interpersonal neurobiologists are finding that relational tending and mending are every much a part of the human response to stress as fight or flight. Given scientific support for the transformative power of connected relationships, this article poses and seeks to answer a single question. What if nurse educators, instead of fighting or fleeing when under stress, tended to and mended their professional relationships?