Nursing in the media: A story

/ Carey S. Clark, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, RYT, FAAN / Leave a comment

Unfortunately, nursing seems to lack a strong presence in the media world, including radio broadcasts. I was thrilled then to discover today on my i-pod and podcast supported walk through the woods the presence of a voice of nursing on an NPR show called Snap Judgement. On this particular show, entitled G.I., show # 216, which aired on May 24, 2012, the vignette entitled “Frances Liberty” includes the account of a world war II nurse and how she cared for the injured and dying as a WAC nurse. Though “Lib” died in 2004, her voice lives on in this story of what I would call nurse heroism through creating caring-healing- spiritual environments.

You can listen to the whole show, which is somewhat heart-breaking in its accounts of veteran PTSD issues, or simply entertain Lib’s story by visiting this link:

http://snapjudgment.org/radio-show?page=1

What this nurse remembers the most in her accounting of being a WWII/ WAC nurse are the caring- healing moments she created for the soldiers. She tells of how she had the pretty nurses with their pleasing appearance doll themselves and use perfume, so as to sit with the most seriously injured and dying. Normally I would be perhaps not really thrilled with this portrayal of a nurse as an object of beauty, but I found myself agreeing that the nurses’ pleasing appearance perhaps create an environment of healing for a young man who is facing his mortality far too soon. Theorists such as Jean Watson and Barbie Dossey have agreed that the environment supports the healing process and this is an example of setting an intention for creating a calming, healing, and perhaps even pleasant presence.

Interestingly, the nurse detailed a story of sharing prayers and a rosary with a young Jewish man who was in need of surgery and facing his mortality. Not to give away the story, but her presence and spiritual support were what made all of the difference for this man; a moment of connection lasted this man’s entire life. And, as we often find in nursing, both for ourselves and our patients, it is those caring moments that our patients whom we serve remember, and it is those moments that most impact us as nurses and spiritual beings on our own healing journey.

I would love to read and hear more of our meaningful stories on the nurse manifest blog and in the media; this sort of story can help us to express to the public that we are there for them both as the providers of technically competent, life-saving care, but also as the guardians and supporters of the spiritual- healing needs.

International Association for Human Caring Conference 2012: Part II

/ Carey S. Clark, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, RYT, FAAN / 4 Comments

On the second day of the conference, the key note speaker was Dr. Sigridur Halldorsdottir. My knowledge of Dr. Halldorsdottir’s work was that it is based in caring, but I found myself truly appreciative of the amazing work she has done to define what caring is. Her Speech was entitled,  Caring or Uncaring: What nursing is and what it is not- Revisited. Those of you familiar with Florence Nightingale’s work will recognize the idea of “what nursing is and is not”.

Sigridur provided us with a model that stated that love is the essence of caring. Caring is supported by the nurse’s courage, wisdom, authenticity, generosity of heart, and self knowledge. Patients can sense when caring is genuine and hospitals need to value caring to support nurses in their work.

Dr. Halldorsdottir also listed 9 competencies for caring. The competencies include caring in the sense of the existential, real caring, the ability to educate, ethical approaches, cultural competence, interpersonal communication, education, empowerment, and self development.The idea of being able to align caring with specific competencies demonstrates the advances we are making in developing a caring science of nursing. The downside which cannot be ignored is that if a caring nurse is placed in an uncaring environment, she will most likely leave that environment. This could be part of the body of evidence as to why so many nurses leave the profession.

It is difficult to capture here the essence of Dr. Halldorsdottir’s caring presence as she presented these ideas; she threaded some healing pictures from her homeland of Iceland throughout the presentation, but I was honored to be able to experience her heartfelt wisdom.

International Human Caring Conference: Part I

/ Carey S. Clark, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, RYT, FAAN / Leave a comment

I think that those of us interested in creating change need to find ways to gather, to heal ourselves, and to support one another in and through the change process. It is a blessing when we as professional nurses can be with other professionals of like mind and like goals.  I was privileged to attend the International Human Caring Conference in Philadelphia, PA this week. There were dozens of trade show displays and booths, of variou new and old non-profits aiming to better the world. As always, the key note speakers were amazing and inspiring: Dr. Jean Watson and Sigridur Halldorsdottir.

Dr. Watson focused on the heart space and unitary patterns, how we are all interconnected and how our own thoughts, intentions, and heart spaces can impact the greater field. Though these are not new concepts for Dr. Watson to express (many of them are mentioned in her 1999 publication Post Modern Nursing and Beyond), there seems to be a growing body of evidence to confirm that the transpersonal human caring states and states of personal peace that come from a heart centered space are able to create a greater unitary space and pattern of healing. Human caring therefore becomes about a unitary place of peaceful connectedness. This concept is confirmed by the fields of quantum theory, the unitary world view, caring science, and the ethics of belonging. Our true power as nurses and healers comes from taking action from a place of an evolving higher vibration consciousness and human caring – peace intentionality. Watson emphasized in her presentation the idea that love and peace are the highest level of unitary consciousness, and it is by dropping into heart space, and enacting our heart ways of being, that we can manifest peace and healing in meaningful ways.

Universal, Unitary Heart

Many people may read this and wonder just how to interact within the heart space; they may assume that it takes great practice and effort to relate to others from a heart space. Watson (1999) did however remind us that we have this power within us already; it is not so much about learning or adding in something, it’s about getting in touch with and remembering who we are- spiritual beings, interconnected from our roots. I like to remember that we all came from our star dust origins.

Some simple techniques to enter into the heart space may include closing your eyes, setting an intentionality for caring, communicating, and healing from the heart. Next, one may start from closing the eyes, focusing on the breath moving in and out of the nostrils. Next take the minds’ intention, by focusing on the “third eye” space or the space between the brows, and from there internally-visually dropping one’s attention into the heart space. Notice how it feels to dwell from this space and intend to be in this space throughout the day. Send the love you feel for and from yourself out to your loved ones, family, friends, pets, colleagues, administrators, your challengers, and the world. This can be done in 1-2 minutes, and one can remember/ return to this practice throughout the day; always returning to the heart space which is the core of our being.

For nurses this should be good news. In a just a few steps, you can begin to create the sort of caring-healing practices that make our work worthwhile and meaningful. Additionally, consider that the more one practices self-care and healing techniques, the easier and more natural it becomes to enter into the heart space. Practices such as yoga, Reiki, meditation, contemplative prayer, and tai chi can help one become familiar with the heart space, and prepared to enter it more easily. Taking good care of one’s being through diet, exercise, and sleep are basic health factors that also enable us to better relate to others from the heart. Within the heart space, nurses can generate peace and wellness for self, others, and all beings of the world. From this place of peace, we can create change within our profession, as we strive to support nursing in our emancipatory process.

Powerful Profession

/ Jane K. Dickinson / 1 Comment

Did you see the NYT opinions article, The Power of Nursing?

It’s a busy time (for all nurses, I’m sure), and I didn’t really know how to relate this to some brilliant idea, but thought it was important to share anyway. Makes me proud of the work nurses do. Reminds me of the variety in our work.

I’m a diabetes educator, so I always think about how things can be applied to people with diabetes. I am planning to share this article with my students in the Master of Science in Diabetes Education and Management program at Teachers College Columbia University. I look forward to exchanging ideas about how we could develop similar programs that help people with diabetes.

What else could nurses do along these lines? What other populations could we help?

Some history on the origin of the word “nurse”

/ Jane K. Dickinson / 5 Comments

Thomas Lawrence Long, from the University of Connecticut, has graciously provided a guest blog post on the etymology of “nurse.” I happened to see something Tom posted about Shakespeare and “nurse” and thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss here.

Because historians of health and health care are sometimes preoccupied with the slipperiness of the signifier nurse (see Monica Green’s (2000) caution concerning the term in reference to medieval and early-modern studies), a brief historical lexicography might illuminate the meanings that the word has accrued, absorbed, and may, to some extent, still carry. Here is examined the historical traces of a noun-substantive, from wet-nurse, to caretaker of children, caretaker of the sick, asexual hive bee, and health professional, in which the traces of ideologies of gender identity and gendered work appear to be retained.

The first instance in English of nurse occurred in the early thirteenth century as the Anglo-Norman nurice, derived from the fifth-century post-Classical Latin nutrice, a wet-nurse (hired to provide an infant with breast milk when the infant’s mother would not or could not do so), although by the time it entered the Middle English lexicon, it had already absorbed the figurative sense of any female caretaker of children (Oxford English Dictionary 2010). Etymologically it is related to our modern word nourish, to feed.

Already by the late fourteenth century nurse had also taken on the figurative sense of any thing or any place that nurtures or fosters a quality or condition, and by the early fifteenth century, any person who takes care of, looks after, educates or advises someone.

The earliest attested use of nurse in a strictly medical sense appears in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (ca 1616): “I will attend my husband, be his nurse, Diet his sicknesse, for it is my Office” (V.i.99). The wife as nurse (and the advantage of marriage as engaging a live-in nurse) is also apparent in the Duchess of Newcastle’s Matrimonial Trouble (1662), which contends, “That he might do [sc. marry], if it were for no other reason, but for a Nurse to tend him, if he should chance to be sick.”

Another curious figurative usage is attested to in the early nineteenth century: nurse as an entomological term, explained by the OED as “A sexually imperfect member of a community of bees, ants, etc., which cares for the larvae; a worker,” citing Kirby and Spence’s Introduction to Entomology (2nd edition): “The workers, termed by Huber nourrices, or petites abeilles (nurses), upon whom the principal labours of the hive devolve.” The Huber in question was the Swiss naturalist François Huber (1750-1831) whose Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles was published at Geneva in 1792 and translated into English in 1806. Perhaps by association the later zoological term nurse shortly came to characterize any asexual invertebrate, a spineless sexless creature.

The semantic process whereby the word nurse begins by denoting a woman hired to provide surrogate breast milk and comes to denote a sexless worker insect may be related to the religious associations of woman as healer and caretaker of the sick, particularly the ubiquitous presence of European women’s religious orders comprised of celibates (and thus, in the medieval view, sexless) devoted to the wellbeing of others.

Reference

Green, Monica H. (2000). Documenting medieval women’s medical practice. Women’s healthcare in the medieval West. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Variorum, pp. II, 322-352.

When you think of the word “nurse,” what comes to mind for you?