Nursing Practice

“If we do not change direction, we are likely to end up exactly where we are headed”- Chinese Proverb.

In one of my previous postings, I mentioned that the nursing revolution would not be televised; in other words, our own revolution begins with an evolution of consciousness about nursing and our practices. I do believe, just as our esteemed nursing theorists Jean Watson has stated time and again, that caring is the essence of nursing practice, and yet we have continued as nurses to generally practice in institutions and organizations that do not know how to value and support the caring- healing capacities of nurses, despite the fact that our patients make clear time and again are of the utmost importance along their healing journey.

We are each, as individuals and nurses, in need of awakening to our own personal path of caring and healing. If we are to be able to share caring and healing with others on a meaningful basis, we have to be on a caring-healing journey for ourselves individually and collectively.

In order to create change in our profession and move toward greater acceptance of caring-healing nursing practices, the change needs to come from within each of us. I have some students who state things along the lines of, “What is the use? I can change myself and yet this will not effect the institution where I work”. And this is where they are wrong. I have seen time and again nurses who move toward changing their consciousness and engaging in their own self-care and healing endeavors, and they then go on to create meaningful changes in their lives and their practices. Others find the courage and strength through self-reflective practices and increasing stress resilience to realize that they are serving a dysfunctional system and they opt to leave their place of employment. By increasing our personal stress resilience and creating new brain pathways, we can open up to creative solutions to workplace problems and we can walk into our own issues instead of running from them or remaining stagnant.

Stress resilience helps us to create a personal revolution toward peace, ease, and well being. The following is a video by Joan Boryenseko on transformational experiences of healing, awakening, and consciousness evolution. Here she walks into the process of witnessing our emotions and the process of witnessing, forgiveness, and grief.

As we undertake the revolutionary steps of transformation to change our personal and nursing consciousness toward peace, we will notice a reduction in aggression and an increase in compassion, caring, love, and tolerance- the qualities needed to support the creation of healing environments in our healthcare systems and facilities. As our personal and professional consciousness evolves and shifts, we begin to move toward a better understanding of the unity of all human beings and species and even to the larger cosmos.

So what prevents us from taking the steps toward personal and professional revolution through consciousness transformation? Below is a video by Eckhart Tolle that briefly described the movement toward consciousness transformation and moving beyond fear.

I am open to hearing your thoughts here and in the next installation, I will present ideas on the steps toward walking into peaceful revolution and transformation in part III.

Nursing is in need of a revolution. A revolution of thought and a revolution of how nursing is learned and practiced. Now seems to be a “good” chaotic moment in time and history for the revolution to begin and perhaps to expand: as our healthcare systems become less well funded, less well-staffed, and as more and more of the population (in theory) begins to seek healthcare due to “Affordable Care Act”, the stage for change and growth have been set. I do predict that some major changes are ahead for nurses and our roles in healthcare, and if we as a profession and as individuals do not create our own revolution in nursing, the revolution will be dictated to us by others.

Dovetailing on my last post about nursing and the media, I feel confident in stating that the nursing revolution will not be televised. The following is video-recording of Gil Scott Heron’s work on the revolution not being televised:

What Gil Scott Heron really meant he explains here:

We as nurses can learn a great deal from this song and the revolution of the civil rights movement to begin to plan how we each can and must forge a plan to change our minds, our consciousness, to move toward the right page, and find the right note as Mr. Heron encourages us to do. Each of us has within us the power to create the environment and practices of nursing that best serve our patients, our colleagues, and ourselves on this human journey of life, healing, and love.

And it begins within; we cannot televise the changes in our consciousness that we create, but we can begin our own efforts focused on healing and creating stress resilience practices that support us in moving toward others, instead of remaining in fight-or- flight mode and running from ourselves and others. We can each create a personal brain bio-psycho-neuro-immunological (mind-body-spirit) revolution movement that can change the face of healthcare as we empower ourselves and others toward healing and supporting our evolution of consciousness personally and professionally.

In future postings, I will discuss a bit more about how this is possible and the amazing tools that we have at our disposal to make this revolution a reality.