A Nursing Manifesto for 2030: Human Care Against Extraction and Exploitation (green paper)


Renata E. Mares MIPH, BScN, BA Kin

Aug 22, 2026

Please use this document in any way that you wish. You can freely use this document (with citation; see our creative commons license in the footer of this and all pages on this site)  The format for citing the document is shown at the end of the table of contents. If you wish to have other ideas integrated into this document, or included on this web site, please contact us or the author directly renata@adaptablefolks.com

1.     Introduction
2.     Planetary Health is Nursing Work
3.     Commercial Determinants of Harms and Health: Get Political  
4.     Nursing Is Not a Buffer for System Failure
5.     Against the Medical-Industrial Complex
6.     Our Commitment
7.     A Call to Conscience and Action
8.     About the Author
9. Reference list (see image)

Citation: Mares, R. E. (2026). A Nursing Manifesto for 2030: Human Care Against Extraction and Exploitation (green paper). https://nursemanifest.com/2026/08/31/a-nursing-manifesto-for-2030-human-care-against-extraction-and-exploitation-green-paper/

Foreword

I came across this incredible blog post about A Nursing Manifesto 2000 written by three incredible nurses and academics: Richard Cowling, Peggy Chinn, Sue Hagedorn in 2000 and I thought to develop a parallel manifesto which brings together some of the books I have been reading over the past 5 years post-pandemic and some which reaches further back to the 80s 90s, 2000s, till present time.

The world have shifted quite a bit since this manifesto was developed and shared. In and of itself, it reads like something to aspire to. Maybe when I started my nursing career as a new graduate back in 2008, it would have been something to aspire to in my own work, career, research and teaching. But now I find some pretty troubling things not only missing from this manifesto as historical accounts, including the troublesome origins of the nursing and medical profession / culture, but it needs to be updated for the year 2030 and beyond.

But first, take some time to read and get familiar with A Nursing Manifesto 2000: https://nursemanifest.com/a-nursing-manifesto-a-call-to-conscience-and-action/

Below is the introduction to A Nursing Manifesto: A Call to Conscience and Action written in 2000. I am sharing here just the initial Introduction, but please do have a read of the entire manifesto as it discusses the ideals and principles, inspiration, concerns, vision and suggestions for actions. It also describes the authors and their positionality and about the art contained within this blog.

A Nursing Manifesto: A Call to Conscience and Action (2000)

by Richard Cowling, Peggy Chinn, Sue Hagedorn

Introduction (excerpt)

“As nurses, we reach for meaningful expressions of our values, too often finding overwhelming constraint and resistance, sometimes within ourselves and sometimes imposed from without. We are calling for a movement to awaken those precious and powerful ideals that are rooted in nursing’s worldwide historical traditions. We call forth the written and spoken voice of nursing to be claimed and reclaimed. We seek to inspire the fullest expression of the heart of nursing through individual and collective acts. We believe there are profound possibilities in claiming our individual and professional sovereignty” … link to full manifesto here: https://nursemanifest.com/a-nursing-manifesto-a-call-to-conscience-and-action/#intro

My initial thoughts on this this first paragraph would be:

  • Awakening the so called ‘precious and powerful ideals’ is definitely a good thing, but how does nursing as a profession and value-based career wrestle with the monolith it has created the lack of diversity over the course of centuries
  • Rooted in nursing’s worldwide historical traditions: would these discuss how Nightingale-like nursing is rooted in supporting war and military efforts? Would these traditions address the issues of explicitly racism, sexism, and harmful medical cultural administrative practice over the course of the centuries? Our current professional associations are build as empires where lack of diverse leadership opportunities persist and patriarchal hierarchies are celebrated as excellence.
  • Attrition in nursing and healthcare is at crisis levels, yet no one talks explicitly about trauma and cPTSD experienced not from patients, toxic teams, but administrative and regulatory practices. Anyone care to elaborate here?

As I was reading this incredible manifesto and remembering back to the year 2000, I started to draw both parallels and the need to advance these exact thoughts to the years 2030 and beyond. At first I had the idea of taking each section and paragraph and write my thoughts in support and opposition. But then I thought, why not take all that I have read and know and develop something totally new yet complementary. Building upon my elders’ work.

Believe it or not, I have a fear of writing my own voice and ideas down. I don’t want to hurt feelings and I do get intimidated by folks who are much more qualified than myself, and therefore, I have the feeling that maybe I should not share what I have to say. I am now slowly building back my lost confidence and also recognizing that part of nuanced and critical thinking is (sometimes) getting things wrong, and sometimes right but too soon. So, I want to share both what I might be thinking that is wrong and also my worries about the nursing profession that I love so much. After nearly 20 years in this profession across specialties like orthopedic/trauma, medical/surgical units, mental health, public and community health, policy and education, I feel that I did my authentic best in trying to build the new and not getting lost in the challenges of the past. However, burnout happens to all of us, some more resilient than others. I am accepting that I might have pushed too hard for change and lacked the skills of relationship building. My past of being a refugee and immigrant female child who grew up in post-Communist Romania and Hungary could add to some of these reasons. The urgency to alleviate struggles for others was a real cause and drive for me. I never understood how a bunch of smart people could just sit around the table and talk about action, while people were struggling. Access to healthcare is access to people’s tax dollars. Talking was seemingly a waste of time from my perspective, as an early career public health nurse. I was searching to find people who felt the same urgency (or at least understood my motivations) as I did to act and help get folks out of poverty, get access to health and social services, and not just talk about it in meetings.

I may have been naïve and rushed. I was give the privilege of a profession to do good and alleviate harms. However, without trusted relationships, money doesn’t flow and people remain in poverty, in struggles that are the result of structures and systems I wanted to adapt. Some lessons we learn the hard way. I am now re-learning to build the confidence to talk, share ideas, and build relationship among people who are looking to advance the only huma-centered profession still remains. (I might be biased in this view) Is the last human job a nurse? Or so I assume in this manifesto. Or maybe the last human jobs are human-collaborations across sectors. Yes, that sounds more like it. But first we need to pivot (yes, just like that couch on a Friends episode from Feb 1999) and pay those human-collaboration jobs a fair wage.

Therefore, I am using my LinkedIn platform to share my ideas of A Nursing Manifesto for 2030: Human Care Against Extraction and Exploitation – a draft (2026) paralleling what has been written in 2000 and adding in some of my ideas from the list of resources that I will share at the very end of this writing. It might give future nurses in undergraduate and graduate studies something to ponder beyond the status quo of the nursing/ healthcare profession and education. We need to get out of ‘our’ status quo cultural box.

As always, I am open to discussions and opposing views that are shared respectfully.

1. INTRODUCTION

‘We’ are nurses (diverse with complex/ adaptive skills professionals) at a time when care is being remade by machines, markets, and systems that measure human worth in data points, risk scores, productivity targets, and billing codes.

We do not reject technology.

We reject technology without accountability.

Artificial intelligence, automation, surveillance, and predictive systems have entered hospitals, homes, clinics, long-term care, and public health. They promise efficiency while too often deepening abandonment. They sort people by profitability, automate denials, intensify workloads, erase human judgment, and place the burdens of flawed systems on those already made vulnerable by racism, colonialism, poverty, disability, gender oppression, and displacement.

We have seen what happens when an algorithm is treated as neutral while it inherits the inequities of the world that trained it. We have seen staffing systems call exhaustion as ‘optimization’. We have seen virtual care become a substitute for accessible, relational care. We have seen automation used not to relieve nurses of harmful labour, but to eliminate jobs, deskill practice, and demand that fewer workers do more with less.

This is not innovation.

It is extraction.

We are nurses practicing amid converging emergencies: widening inequality, climate breakdown, poisoned water, forced displacement, worsening chronic illness, automated exclusion, and healthcare systems increasingly governed by commercial interests rather than public need.

We affirm that health is inseparable from the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, age, and die. Health begins with breathable air, safe homes, nourishing food, clean water, meaningful connection, cultural continuity, freedom from violence, and a stable living planet. No hospital, algorithm, drug, or procedure can compensate for a society that systematically destroys these foundations.

The medical-industrial complex has transformed illness into revenue, crisis into market opportunity, and health into a commodity distributed according to wealth, insurance status, postal code, citizenship, and institutional power. It profits from endless treatment while neglecting clean air, safe housing, food security, living wages, disability justice, mental health, reproductive freedom, and the conditions that allow people to live well before they become patients.

We reject the fiction that health care exists apart from the world. The same systems that commodify illness extract from workers, communities, lands, and waters. The medical-industrial complex profits from treatment while underinvesting in prevention; corporations profit from pollution while public systems absorb the resulting disease; technology firms market “innovation” while shifting social, environmental, and clinical risks onto patients, caregivers, and frontline workers.

This is not an accident. It is a political choice.

We refuse to accept a healthcare system that calls itself advanced while people wait in pain, workers burn out and become patients themselves (Chapman, 2023), communities are poisoned, and the planet warms. (Check out the underlying drivers of planetary harms by Planetary Health Alliance website: culture, values, behaviour, consumption, population size/demographic changes, technology) https://planetaryhealthalliance.org/what-is-planetary-health/

Nursing must be more than the human face placed on an inhumane system. Our role is not to make austerity appear compassionate, to absorb the moral injury created by unsafe conditions, or to quietly compensate for decisions made by executives, insurers, technology firms, regulators and governments far from the bedside.

Our ethical obligation is to care and to confront what makes care impossible.

2. Planetary Health is Nursing Work

Planetary health is not an optional specialty or a future concern. It is present in every heat-related illness, asthma exacerbation, contaminated water supply, food insecurity assessment, infectious-disease outbreak, wildfire evacuation, pregnancy complication, mental-health crisis, and preventable death.

We recognize the health of people as inseparable from the health of lands, waters, ecosystems, and climate. Indigenous peoples have long carried knowledge of these relationships and of stewardship, reciprocity, and collective responsibility. Nursing must listen, learn, and act without appropriating that knowledge or repeating colonial systems of control.

We will advocate for health systems that reduce rather than export harm: low-carbon care, ethical procurement, less waste, resilient infrastructure, safe transportation, sustainable food systems, and emergency planning led with (not imposed upon) affected communities.

Clean water is a health right, not a commercial asset. Water insecurity, contamination, privatization, boil-water advisories, drought, flooding, and inadequate sanitation are nursing concerns because they produce infection, chronic disease, reproductive harm, trauma, displacement, and death. We will name water injustice as a clinical and public-health emergency, especially where it follows colonial dispossession, industrial pollution, and neglect of rural, remote, and Indigenous communities.

3. Commercial Determinants of Harm and Health: Get Political

We confront the commercial determinants of health: the corporate practices that shape exposure to harm, access to care, public policy, and the very definition of health.

Industries profit when people consume products that damage their bodies or environment, including tobacco and nicotine corporations, alcohol producers, ultra-processed food companies, fossil-fuel industries, extractive mining interests, pharmaceutical monopolies, private equity firms, surveillance platforms, and vendors of unaccountable health technology, and digital-addictive designs and digital-afterlife industries. Their influence reaches advertising, research, regulation, education, political lobbying, clinical guidelines, and data infrastructure.

We reject the normalization of harm as “consumer choice” when choices are engineered through marketing, pricing, scarcity, misinformation, racism, design inequity and unequal power.

We also recognize that commercial power can shape health positively only when it is democratically governed, transparent, and subordinated to the public good. Products, technologies, and services must be assessed not simply by revenue or technical novelty, but by their effects on equity, ecological sustainability, worker safety, community control, and long-term health. (my favourite slogan: war brings neither peace nor climate justice, defund military spending).

4. Nursing Is Not a Buffer for System Failure

Nursing is not low-paid emotional labour designed to absorb the failures of health and social systems. It is not a flexible reserve workforce to be stretched during crises, disciplined through precarity, or replaced by automation when budgets demand it.

Nursing knowledge is scientific, relational, ethical, political, and ecological. Nurses assess changing conditions, interpret uncertainty, build trust, notice patterns others miss, coordinate care across fragmented systems, protect rights, respond to suffering, and advocate for structural change. This expertise cannot be reduced to tasks, scripts, dashboards, or a layer of “human oversight” added after an algorithm has already shaped a person’s options.

We reject the use of artificial intelligence and automation to intensify work, monitor workers, remove professional judgment, automate benefit or treatment denials, or redirect accountability away from corporations and institutions. A nurse must never be expected to legitimize a harmful system simply because a person remains nominally “in the loop.”

Technology must serve care, not govern it. Any system used in health care must be transparent, independently audited, accessible, privacy-protective, environmentally accountable, and open to challenge by patients, families, nurses, and communities. It must be assessed for bias, labour impacts, energy and water use, supply-chain harms, and effects on access, not only for accuracy or cost savings.

5. Against the Medical-Industrial Complex

The medical-industrial complex converts suffering into revenue. It treats health as a market, patients as customers, records as assets, and workers as costs to be minimized. It normalizes private equity, monopolies, predatory pricing, medical debt, pharmaceutical profiteering, commercialization of data, and the outsourcing of public responsibilities to corporations.

We refuse a health system that boasts of technological progress while people cannot obtain primary care, medication, safe housing, home care, reproductive services, mental-health support, palliative care, or culturally safe care.

We oppose austerity disguised as efficiency. We oppose privatization disguised as innovation. We oppose surveillance disguised as safety. We oppose extraction disguised as care.

A just health system must be universal, public, adequately funded, community-rooted, culturally safe, accessible, and accountable to the people it serves. It must invest upstream: in income security, public housing, education, food sovereignty, disability justice, harm reduction, clean water, healthy ecosystems, and meaningful public-health capacity.

6. Our Commitment

We therefore commit ourselves to:

  • Defend human dignity over speed, profit, automation, and institutional convenience.
  • Defend health as a collective right and reject its treatment as a commodity.
  • Identify and confront commercial practices that produce illness, environmental destruction, inequity, and barriers to care.
  • Follow the leadership of communities most affected by environmental injustice, commercial exploitation, and institutional neglect.
  • Insist that every artificial intelligence system used in health care be transparent, independently audited, explainable, contestable, and governed with meaningful public and worker participation.
  • Refuse algorithms that reproduce discrimination or replace clinical judgment, informed consent, and relationships of trust. Stand against racism, colonialism, ableism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, class exploitation, and xenophobia in health systems and society.
  • Demand that technology reduce harmful work and expand access to care, not intensify surveillance, cut staffing, deskill nursing, or deny services. My post on nursing profession and branding https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7496682545108025345/
  • Organize for safe staffing, fair wages (like programmers and coders once were paid), public health infrastructure, union rights, and workplaces where nurses can speak honestly without retaliation (regulatory harms have still not been addressed explicitly and attrition continues to crisis levels). My post on trauma: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7496346149822287873/ ; my post on regulatory harms https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7496353936921071616/
  • Treat climate disruption as a health emergency created by unequal systems of extraction, and advocate for care that protects communities and the living world.
  • Stand with patients and communities against medical debt, privatization (yes Canada, you too), predatory pharmaceutical practices, corporate consolidation, and the commodification of suffering (CDoH, 2022). post on global power demand by 2030 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7255265303691997184/
  • Advocate for public, universal health systems free from corporate capture and private-profit priorities.
  • Center the knowledge and leadership of Indigenous peoples, Black communities, disabled people, migrants, low-income communities, and all those harmed first and worst by unequal systems. (Can we please collect wealth tax, and stat? Harrington, 2025)
  • Protect the right of every person to understand, question, and refuse the technologies affecting their body, records, treatment, and future. (Once people lose mental capacity, at any age, what happens to their digital footprint and logins. Read up on digital-afterlife industry) my post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7496323674120048640/
  • Practice solidarity across professions, sectors, and borders, because no individual nurse can solve harms produced by structural power.
  • Protect clean water, sanitation, healthy ecosystems, and climate stability as indispensable conditions of health.
  • Treat nursing expertise as essential to governance, policy, technology design, climate adaptation, public health, and community-led care, not as inexpensive labour or an afterthought in executive decisions.
  • Build care systems based on solidarity, reciprocity, prevention, justice, and ecological repair.

7. A Call to Conscience and Action

In 2030, conscience requires more than compassion.

It requires courage. Not only to speak for/with patients, families and communities, but to speak against professional toxic culture, leadership, and stagnant professional envelopment. It requires collective action against the systems that manufacture illness and call the consequences unavoidable.

It requires us to ask not only, “Can this technology be used?” but “Who does it serve? Who exposed to/ bears its risks? Who profits? What forms of care, labour, and life does it displace?” Who is left waiting, excluded, displaced, or silenced?

I have held a role as a nurse informatics, merging duplicate files because IBM refused to adapt their infrastructure. Are informatics professionals seen as human-in-the-loop or human-exploited-in-the-loop?

It requires us to understand that a healthy society cannot be built on exhausted workers, disposable patients, automated exclusion, or a damaged planet. We CAN however, pivot workforce roles and pay people to do human jobs, like witnessing and delivering care where it’s needed. (Pugh, 2026)

Care cannot be ethical if it relies on ecological destruction. Innovation cannot be just if it is built on surveillance, dispossession, or underpaid labour. Health cannot exist where water is unsafe, homes are unaffordable, ecosystems are collapsing, and human needs are subordinated to corporate return.

We will not be reduced to exhausted labour, automated compliance, or human cover for decisions made by machines and markets.

We call on nurses to reclaim our collective (yet, diverse) voice. We call on health workers to organize. We call on institutions to place care above revenue (wealth tax helps here). We call on governments to regulate health technologies in the public interest and to fund universal, accessible, community-rooted health care.

We call on the public to reject a future in which the right to health is determined by an algorithm or a balance sheet.

Care is not a product. Health is not a privilege. People are not (just) data to be extracted and sold.

The planet is not expendable.

We will not be silent witnesses to systems that harm in the name of progress.

We will practice, organize, resist, and build a future in which care remains human, collective, just, and sustainable.

We are nurses. We are advocates, clinicians, educators, organizers, researchers, knowledge holders, and defenders of the conditions required for life.

We will care for people and we will fight for the world in which people can be well.

8. About the Author

The Nursing Manifesto 2030 builds upon and expands The Nursing Manifesto 2000, the pioneering work of Richard Cowling, Sue Hagedorn, and Peggy Chinn. In the age of AI, provenance is one of the most important forms of acknowledgement, demonstrating that ideas and thoughts never simply appear, but are cultivated, grazed, turned over, and digested with time, patience, and communal support. The original authors all came from white, middle-class backgrounds and grew up in diverse regions of the United States (New York, Hawaii, Virginia), with relatively privileged access to education, travel, and cultural experiences. Yet early in their lives, each followed personal and political paths that challenged the status quo, often to the chagrin of family and friends. Though not always overtly “political” on the surface, their journeys reflected a deep yearning for peace, justice, and the caring, nurturing values they perceived to be at the heart of nursing. They came together to prepare the text for A Nursing Manifesto 2000, informed by their shared awareness of the deeply political nature of personal choices.

Renata E. Mares, author of The Nursing Manifesto 2030: Human Care Against Extraction and Exploitation (green paper), brings both continuity and distinct difference to this legacy. Born in 1984 in Oradea, Romania, a region marked by Hungarian legacies and Romanian cultural tensions since the 1920s (Treaty of Trianon), she became a refugee at age four when her family fled the communist regime in 1988. She grew up in post-communist Hungary (schooling) and Romania (summer vacations), experiences that shaped her social justice and ethical compass, and led her to challenge oppressive and racist systems throughout her nursing career. Her father and brother spend fiver years (1990-95) in Rochester, New York in hopes for her mother and herself to follow but at that time families could not easily join. Her family immigrated to Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 1996 and has called this place home even across her decades of travel and nursing. Since nursing school in Canada (2003–2008) and continuing through diverse roles in ortho-trauma, med-surg, rehabilitation, mental health, long-term care, public health, outbreak management, policy consulting, education, and global humanitarian work (2009–2019), she has consistently challenged the status quo, even when it meant alienating friends, colleagues, and family. Today, she firmly believes nursing remains the most human-centered profession, uniquely positioned to challenge profiteering practices, build regulatory and safety guardrails through healthy public policy, and resist automation of human-care work. Grateful to the original manifesto authors for helping her articulate the political nature of her own choices, she writes in hopes that reflection, awareness, and philosophy will offer others the same healing she has found through two decades of honest practice in nursing and across the health system.

9. References

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Arthur Allen. Vaccine: The Controversial Story Of Medicines Greatest Lifesaver. WW Norton, 2008.

“Automating Inequality.” Virginia Eubanks, August 19, 2017. https://virginia-eubanks.com/automating-inequality/.

Bartlett, Cheryl, Murdena Marshall, and Albert Marshall. “Two-Eyed Seeing and Other Lessons Learned within a Co-Learning Journey of Bringing Together Indigenous and Mainstream Knowledges and Ways of Knowing.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 2, no. 4 (2012): 331–40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-012-0086-8.

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Brian Evergreen. Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence. 2023. https://www.amazon.ca/Autonomous-Transformation-Creating-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/1119985293.

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Cory Doctorow. The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. 2026. https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/3584-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.

Costanza-Chock, Sasha. Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. Information Policy, edited by Sandra Braman. MIT Press, 2020. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262043458/design-justice/.

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Richard Cowling, Peggy Chinn, and Sue Hagedorn. “A Nursing Manifesto: A Call to Conscience and Action.” NurseManifest, 2000. https://nursemanifest.com/a-nursing-manifesto-a-call-to-conscience-and-action/.

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Nurses’ Day Eve


It is the eve of our special day

Can we honor nurses’ caring in a new found way?

~

Can we as a profession unite?

Centering and shining our healing light.

~

It’s our own day emerging from here, nurses’ day eve

Supporting one another, let’s believe:

 

That all nurses can earn a superior pay

That love and caring will rule the day

That hope and healing reign supreme

That we soon shall realize Nightingale’s dream

That we shine the light in any places remaining dark

That each nurse may leave her or his healing mark

That nursing education moves fully toward caring science

That we remain cohesive and united, growing our reliance

Yes, the field of nursing is moving out of oppression

Journeying forward to our own art, science, and caring expression.

~

 

With great thanks to the many nurses actively striving to create transformative change, innovations, and holistic-caring practices; keep striving, keep healing, and share your love and light!

 

 

International Human Caring Conference: Part I


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.

Dream of a Healing House & Feminist thought in nursing


Toady I posted on my own blog a “reprint” of the “Dream of a Healing House” that appeared in 1989 in the now-defunct journal Nursing and Health Care.  For those who have become familiar with the NurseManifest project, you will immediately recognize that the dream, and the feminist ideas that I wrote about then are also part of the foundation of the NurseManifest project.  It seems like a discouragingly long time since I first wrote this article, and of course it is even much longer since others have conceived of similar ideas.  But, those of us who have been and are inspired by the ideals embedded in NurseManifest possibilities thankfully never give up the dream!

What prompted me to get permission to “reprint” the dream was a request, by email, from a school in Australia that was facing a routine accreditation review of their curriculum, and in the documents that they had on record describing the curriculum there was a reference to a “dream of a healing house” that was not cited, but that folks involved with the program believed to have been published by me at some point along the way!  They were contacting me to see if this was the case, and if so, where was it published.  I still do not know what their curriculum materials contain, but of course I provided the information they needed and urged them to keep working to make this a reality!

This kind of connection continues to pop up regularly with the NurseManifest project – someone somehow hears about or sees the web site, and either emails or comments when we meet about how much the web site means to them.  So far we have done no promotion, and I wonder what might happen if we were to find more ways to let folks know we exist?  But regardless, I am so very glad that the ideas are “out there” as part of a much wider and deeper trust that we can make a difference!

If you have had experiences that affirm the possibility that our ideals can, or actually are coming into action, please share here!  Just share a comment about what you have experienced, and let’s build a “log” of things that affirm our conviction that the ideals can be real!

Examining the Nurse Manifesto: Identifying with the Past and Future


Now, seeking meaningful avenues for action, we choose to identify ourselves with the heritage and future of nurses. From nursing history we have learned the fullness of our own potential as nurses, the strength of nurses, the effect of nurses in communities and to individuals. We have seen our own common self interest, and common oppression. Having found these authentic bonds as nurses, we realize we can rely on each other as we seek conscience-based action to shape a new future for nursing and for health care (Cowling, Chinn, & Hagedorn, 2000, paragraph 4).

This is another excerpt form the Nurse Manifesto, a document that calls us as nurses to create avenues of change for the future of the profession. As I reflect upon this excerpt, and our identity as a profession. Where did we come from and where are we headed? How can history inform the future of our profession, and how is it we can come together to create meaningful change?

Nurses Honor the Past By Wearing Caps For A Day

In 2002, I wrote an article about the nursing shortage and how in some respects, the profession has created our oppressive cycle by not coming together to empower ourselves and take control of future and our practices (Clark, 2002). Perhaps reflective of the greater culture, we tend to enact lateral violence, and repeat actions that keep us divided over our differences versus united in the quest to provide the greatest healing opportunities for our patients. We see that our own oppression grows, as we widen the gaps between administration/ managers and practicing nurses, and the dominance of nurse educators over students. Focusing on our differences, creating small factions, failing to care for ourselves, not committing to being lifelong learners, and spreading ourselves thin all contribute to our professional oppression and keep us from focusing on our common goals.

I believe that we can each start right where we are at. The first step is caring for yourself that you may also better for care for others, patients and colleagues alike. Creating work environments of healing and caring is a common goal we can share and explore together on the local level. We can commit to creating a consciousness for change in nursing and healthcare.

As the over-arching professional organization, it would be wonderful if the American Nurses Association could begin to bring us together on a national level. It seems the state nursing associations on many levels are more likely to create local action, but they also need assistance in gaining participation and increasing membership numbers. In my small state of Maine at our statewide meeting last year a quorum was not established as there simply were not enough members present to meet that mark.

I imagine a professional world where each donate some of our time every year toward taking action on the local-statewide level, whether that is writing a letter to congressional representatives, or serving our larger communities, or perhaps sharing our expertise about the human experience. I have served on the local school board, where I helped to foster much-needed changes in the kitchen and the nutritional program, and now I serve on the early education advisory council in my town, where I share and learn about childhood development and teaching and evaluation skills. Churches are another great place to provide healing services and demonstrate your expertise as a nurse. Serving in communities helps us to unit with the community and our patients; this unification process can also foster change as we grow our partnerships and empower communities and individuals toward creating the healthcare system of the future.

One great way to come together is to join a specialty nurses association and attend their conference. I have found great comfort, support, and enthusiasm in the American Holistic Nurses Association; it is rejuvenating to leave the conference and begin to take action based on what was learned there. I have found that the AHNA has a great commitment to changing the future of the nursing profession, and empowering nurses on a meaningful manner.

Lastly, how do we empower the future nurses to realize the potential of our profession? They must understand the path that nursing has traveled, the change process, self-care, and their potential contribution to the unveiling of the new paradigm of healing in our future.

Nurses in the Future

References:

Clark, C. S. (2002). The nursing shortage as a community transformational opportunity. Advances in Nursing Science, 25(1), 18-31.

Cowling, R., Chinn, P.L., & Hagedorn, S. (2000). The Nurse Manifesto.
Retrieved August 12, 2011 from
http://www.nursemanifest.com.