If you google the definition of a leader, you will find tons of different opinions on what that actually means. If I had to sum it up, I'd say that a leader encourages us to dream bigger, want better, think smarter, AND then actually show us how to get there. Matthew has checked all the boxes on what I believe is a good leader and the kind I'd like to work beside for a long time. Recently, I saw him in a meeting in scrubs. What kind of executive/administrator wears scrubs? Right, none of them. I'm pretty sure the dress code doesn't encourage that.

While I didn't hear him bragging about the greatness of why he was wearing scrubs, I did hear the story from a friend. Matthew decided to help our skin team and survey patients. He was focused on improving outcomes surrounding HAPIs and instead of telling us how to do it, he showed us. He put on those scrubs, introduced himself to the patients, and then completed the work at hand. The story gets better. The patient was soiled. He didn't call the nurse. He didn't press the call light. He cleaned the patient. I find this to be a perfect example because he could have done 100 things differently-but he didn't. He remembered he was a nurse first and chose to lead nurses and other leaders by example. He may still give me death looks on the regular when I ask for things that cost a lot of money, but I won't ever forget that he wore scrubs and got hip-to-hip with the nurses he leads.

Matthew exemplifies the professional practice model in its entirety, but his specialty is Shared Leadership. Shared Leadership is known for empowering nurses and their leaders, and he strongly encourages collaboration between the two jobs for decision-making. He also has a gift of recognizing strengths and weaknesses and doesn't see one as good or bad. He uses them all to work together for the good of the team and respects those weaknesses so one can be a strength for the team. Without this knowledge and implementation, shared leadership just doesn't work. He is concerned about the well-being of all and ensures that we are able to understand the why behind what we do.