Webinar on Digital Stories in Nursing Education


Please join Nurstory and StoryCenter on Wednesday, September 19th, at 11am Pacific Time/2pm Eastern Time for a FREE one-hour webinar, Using Digital Stories in Nursing Education.

Click here to register!

In this current era of media overload, personal stories that are honest and emotionally compelling can make important contributions to nursing education, compassion fatigue, and practice. We’ll specifically focus on:

1) Professionalism and the inherent values of altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity, and social justice are fundamental to the discipline of nursing

2) Synthesize concepts, including psycho-social dimensions and cultural diversity

3) Health care advocacy (begins by understanding a perspective other than your own)

Then we’ll go over the history of the Nurstory project as well as ideas for and, examples of, the use of Nurstory process and products in Teaching and Learning:

  • Reflective Practice– Prompt students to reflect on a story, promote dialogue, counter narrative, personal exchange and inquiry
  • Student Centered Teaching & Learning – Increases student visibility & voice through reflective practice & sensitivity to diverse perspectives.
  • Inter-professional Collaboration: Create student digital stories (across education & with other health professional students & share).
  • Ethics – Examine nursing ethics & professional practice.
  • Teach & Learn Dialogue versus Discussion – Practice listening, presence, synthesis of perspectives and tell more stories
  • Influence Policy/Nurse Activism – Select a story that might be used to influence policy makers.
  • Research – Thematic analysis across stories to better understand phenomenon of interest.
  • Self-Care – Expression of self for better understanding and shared perspectives.

Since the late 1990s, StoryCenter has been collaborating with public health practitioners, researchers, and grassroots organizers on the development of unique, community-based and technology-based methods (eg, mobile, social media, web) for getting stories out into the world. Nurstory, a project specific to the narratives that nurses carry, was started in 2007.

Join us for an introduction to current thinking on strategies and platforms for creating and utilizing first-person stories of the experiences of nurses.

Raeann Genevieve LeBlanc (1967 – )


Inspiration for Activism Part II – 

  • Participant in the 2018 Nursing Activist Think Tank; served as facilitator for story circles.
  • Human Rights, Animal Rights, LGBTQIA Rights, Public Health Activist and Advocate,
  • Empowerment through Story-telling Activism (Nurstory), Kindness as a Social Justice Act, Emancipatory Nursing Practice, Anti-Oppression Activism and Advocate for Social Change — Small Acts Matter, Community Gardener & Cyclist
  • Mantras: “Our actions show what it is we value” & “Hope smiles on effort”
  • History of specific activist involvement:
    • 2017- Nurstory Scholar – Story telling for social change and social justice
    • 2016-2017: Teaching for Inclusion, Diversity & Equity Fellow
    • 2012- Public Health Association Activist – Diversity & Social Justice Nursing
    • 2001-:  Animal rights (No Kill Activist, No Animal Left Behind, Socially Responsible Medicine, Antivivisection in Science, Education, & Alternatives to Animal Testing)
    • 1997-:  Preservation of Community Gardening Action & Bicycle/Pedestrian Rights
    • 1986: International Peace Camp –  Activism for International Understanding and Peace

Maeve Howett (1960- )


Inspirations for Activism: Part II!

  • Participant in the 2018 Nursing Activist Think Tank; served as facilitator for story circles.
  • Radical, post-modern, feminist, nurse activist and educator promoting

    Maeve Howett

    peace, sustainability, protection of the vulnerable, and a reimagining of power

  • 2017 Online Education.com Top Twenty on Twitter: Top Nursing Professors on Twitter
  • Named to Federal Advisory Committee: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Children’s Health Protection Advisory Council (CHPAC)
  • Named Nurse Luminary: Healthcare Without Harm for work on sustainability in nursing

See You Tube videos on breastfeeding, feminism, care of migrant children here and here and here and here and here and here and here  and here.

An Open Letter on the vital importance of empathy in STEM


Nursing Activism Think Tank participant Rachel Walker just shared this information about a letter-writing campaign that many who follow this blog might want to see!  Here is her message:

UMASS professors Dr. Sarah Perry, Dr. Sandra Petersen and I have recently penned an open letter on the vital importance of empathy in STEM. Our letter is addressed to the task force currently writing the next 5-year Federal Strategic Plan for STEM education.

You can read our letter here

And if you wish, add your signature as well:

(And please note, this letter is an exercise in academic freedom. We are proposing our views, not an official position of the University.)

Adeline Falk-Rafael (1943 – )


Inspiration for Activism: Part II.

  • Spoke truth to power in advocating for publicly funded, not-for-profit health care.
  • Initiated a lobby group to persuade Federal Health Minister to include

    Adeline Falk-Rafael

    health promotion in universal health care legislation.

  • Emphasized social determinants of health during time as President of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario.
  • Author of cutting-edge scholarship focused on emancipatory nursing and the theory of Critical Caring in nursing (also see titles listed below).
  • Advocated strongly for nurses to be conferred with the academic degrees commensurate with their program of study.
  • Taught leadership to Internationally Educated Nurses, highlighting political activism as a form of leadership

 

Protesting outside the Ontario legislature to bring attention to our demands for increased nursing staffing in nursing homes.

Adeline’s York University web page

Chinn, P.L. & Falk-Rafael (In press). Embracing the focus of the discipline of nursing: Critical caring pedagogy. Journal of Nursing Scholarship.

Falk-Rafael, A.R. (In press). Critical Caring. In Smith, M. (Ed.) Nursing Theories and Nursing Practice (6th ed.) F.A. Davis: Philadelphia.

Chinn, P.L. & Falk-Rafael, A.R. (2017). Critical caring as a requisite for peace leadership. In Amaldas, S. & Bryne, S. (Eds.), Peace Leadership: The Quest for Connectedness. Routledge: New York.

Chinn, P.L. & Falk-Rafael, A.R. (2015). Peace and Power: A theory of emancipatory group process. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 47(1), 62-69.

Falk-Rafael, A. & Bradley, P. (2014). Towards Justice in Health: An exemplar of speaking truth to power. Advances in Nursing Science, 37(3), 224-234.