The speech “How nurses can help drive healthcare innovation” by Rebecca Love, published by TEDxBeaconStreet in November 2018, can be retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_love_how_nurses_can_help_drive_healthcare_innovation.
The speech presented by Love was about a crucial topic in healthcare, which includes engaging nurses in innovative decision making. Nurses are often significant in the healthcare environment dealing directly with patients, although they are left behind as decisions in the field are made. The general function and purpose of the speaker’s speech were to educate individuals on the nurse’s role. This condition is evident from the descriptions or Rebecca Love concerning the continuous challenges facing the healthcare sector due to the lack of integration of nurses’ ideas and other professionals to create more useful strategies.
The speaker discusses several main points in her presentation. The primary concept involves the need to include nurses in decision making and promote nurses as innovators. Another point concerns the need to stop the insanity experienced in healthcare where people expect different results by continuously doing the same thing. The primary supporting materials in her presentation include examples obtained from secondary sources, for instance, the encounters of Florence Nightingale when she served as a volunteer to treat wounded soldiers. She uses pictures to describe various concepts. Love also supports her ideas with Robert Einstein’s quote. The points were well supported with evidence from secondary materials and real-life experiences. The innovation in early healthcare practices resulted from Nightingale’s efforts, who was a volunteer but without equivalent experience to the physicians. She also explains how nurses are left out in conventions that require developing new ideas and interventions to improve healthcare, and the result is less effective measures. This condition is evident from the continuous reduction in the number of nurses working on the bedsides. She also uses efficient language to support her views.
The speaker’s main ideas were easy to follow and organized using a coherent design scheme. She starts by introducing the issue where she explains Nightingale’s encounters when treating wounded soldiers in battle. She then shows how the woman helped transform the medical field as a nurse. The next step is discussing the problem and how it affects the healthcare sector. She continues by giving recommendations of what should be done and provides a situation where she put the recommendation in practice and yielded extraordinary results. Her design takes the audience step by step to the conclusion. Besides, the speaker actively used transitions to join different sentences and distinct ideas. These features helped to create a speech that would allow the audience to follow the flow of ideas.
Rebecca Love gained the audience’s attention with an exciting introduction, where she begins with a short story about Florence Nightingale and her influence in the medical field. This technique was useful since it captures the focus of listeners before she introduces her topic. Moreover, the speaker presents a sense of closure with a practical conclusion. She explains how developing a program that engaged nurses in decision making and innovation has gained interest in the US and its usefulness in healthcare. She concludes by explaining the need to integrate efforts from different healthcare professionals to achieve success. Her presentation style was effective, where she focused on creating humor and using real-life instances to convince the audience. Love makes people see the healthcare gap and how it could be solved easily by including nurses in innovation activities.
Rebecca Love spoke extemporaneously from memory in her presentation, although she used supporting information from sources or images displayed on the screen. The primary information she used in her speech was from her memory, indicating that she had sufficient insight into the topic since she was also a nurse. Her presentation is even more effective, particularly due to the active use of eye contact with her audience. She moved on the stage and used gestures and facial expressions to help elaborate her views. A good speech requires connecting to the audience using the mentioned features, and Love achieved this objective by connecting to people on all sides of the stage. The voice quality of the speaker is also useful since it complements the message. Her voice shows the seriousness and the issue and convinces the listeners that she understands the subject and knows what she is describing.
The speaker’s presentation portrays strengths like stage use, body movement, voice progression, and use of supportive sources. However, the presentation also has a few weaknesses, including insufficient audience engagement in the speech by asking questions. The presentation was more of ly Love’s ideas, and the audience only had to listen, and she did not connect with them to know if they understand her presentation. Rebecca Love could make her presentation more efficient in the future by turning nervous energy into enthusiasm. Enthusiasm helps develop an eloquent speech. She should understand that audiences are often sympathetic and want the speech to succeed, and the speaker should not try too hard to be perfect.