Leadership & change theory
Running a campaign on burnout without a plan for how change actually spreads would be a little ironic. Four frameworks do the heavy lifting here — two on how we lead, two on how the work gets sequenced.
The two lenses behind our tone
Transformational leadership
Heffernan (2024) found lower burnout tracks with leaders who challenge people intellectually, notice them as individuals, and hold out a vision worth working toward. We're not anyone's manager, but that's still the tone we're aiming for — inspire over instruct.
Strengths-based nursing leadership
Gottlieb et al. (2012) argue for building from what's already working rather than cataloguing deficits. That shows up in our content as a refusal to talk about nurses only in terms of what's breaking them — their resilience and their teamwork get equal airtime.
Kotter's eight-step change model
Kotter (1995) provides the backbone for how we're sequencing this initiative — from establishing urgency through to sustaining short-term wins.
Create urgency
We frame burnout as a patient-safety issue, following Li et al. (2024) — not a wellness footnote, but a risk to the people nurses care for.
Build a guiding coalition
Our group serves as that coalition for now, with partner organizations (ONA, RNAO, Ontario Health Coalition) as the campaign grows.
Form a strategic vision
Communicated through short videos, infographics, and written content across TikTok, Instagram, and Substack.
Enlist a volunteer army
Followers become participants through weekly recovery and advocacy challenges, not passive viewers.
Enable action by removing barriers
Pre-written MPP letter templates and plain-language policy education lower the barrier to advocacy.
Generate short-term wins
Weekly challenges built around burnout reduction and upstream advocacy — including prompts to contact Members of Provincial Parliament.
Sustain acceleration
Monthly Substack pieces timed to policy windows keep pressure on structural issues rather than letting momentum lapse.
Institute change
Teaching healthcare policy engagement (Smith et al., 2025) so the advocacy work continues past our own involvement.
Diffusion of Innovations
Rogers' (2003) Diffusion of Innovations theory guides which channel gets which content, and when.
Early adopters — TikTok & Instagram
Nurses and nursing students are the early-adopter audience, consuming 60–90 second clips on lived experience, weekly recovery challenges, and advocacy prompts.
Later adopters — Substack
Infographics and written posts pointing to structural causes target nurse managers, educators, and policymakers — people positioned closer to the decision-making structures that can act on this evidence.
See the theory in action
Platforms, posting cadence, and metrics — all built around the frameworks on this page.