Nursing must be a graduate profession (Well, he would say that, wouldn't he!)

Public health nursing education viewed through the lens of superdiversity: a resource for global health

BACKGROUND

Nurses are increasingly confronted with the challenge of globalization and the acceleration of migratory flows. This reality affects the notion of culture and its influence on health-related behaviors. The state of health of the population in the Canton of Geneva, where there is a wide diversity of origins, is characterized by significant differences. The term "superdiversity" is used to describe the increasing complexity in ethnic diversity due to migration and social stratification. Nursing education in Geneva, influenced by the Bologna Process, appears appropriate for superdiverse contexts of care, with the development of dedicated competencies.

AIM

This discussion paper aims to examine the academic curricula implemented in Geneva in the light of the concept of superdiversity.

MAIN TEXT

In Geneva, nursing education and curricula in public health are based on a competence framework for nursing care divided into 7 roles and educational tracks. Bachelor's-level nurses know how to assess a care problem quickly and solve it effectively by setting relevant priorities, and do so based on evidence. The curricula aim to teach nurses to design population and individual interventions in their superdiverse context.

DISCUSSION

Education should enable students to develop their role as health promoters for the well-being of patients and communities, taking into account cultural complexity.

CONCLUSIONS

Superdiverse contexts highlight the role of nurse educators in preparing future generations of public health nurses.

'Shitty nursing' - The new normal?

In this article we ask our profession to consider whether something is rotten at the core of modern nursing. We will use our own experiences as patients, together with published literature, to ask questions of our profession in perpetrating what one of our colleagues recently, and with great embarrassment, referred to as 'shitty nursing'. Our intention is most certainly not to offend any readers, for this term has been used in literature for more than one hundred years to describe bad situations, including those where events or people's behaviour are of a low standard. Our intention instead, is to challenge ourselves, the profession and you the reader by raising a measured debate which seems at present to be missing within the profession. We examine the potential idea that poor nursing care may not be the exception, but horrifyingly, may be the new normal. We are particularly concerned that patients' fundamental care needs may be falling into an ever widening gap between assistant and registered nurses. Whilst we acknowledge the potential causes of poor nursing care, causes that are often cited by nurses themselves, we come to the conclusion that a mature profession including clinicians, educators, administrators, researchers and regulators cannot continually blame contextual factors for its failings. A mature profession with an intact contract between itself and society must shoulder some of the responsibility for its own problems. We do suggest a way forward, including a mix of reconciliation, refocus and research, underpinned by what we argue is a much needed dose of professional humility. Readers may take us to task for potentially overstating the problem, ignoring non-nursing drivers, and downplaying other significant factors. You may think that there is much in nursing to glory in. However, we make no apology for presenting our views. Our lived experiences tell us something different. As professional nurses our main aim is to ensure that our adverse experiences as patients are statistical anomalies, and our future encounters with nursing care represent all that we know to be excellent in our profession. We leave you to judge and comment.

Understanding the Essence of Caring from the Lived Experiences of Filipino Informatics Nurses

Caring is considered a unique concept in nursing because it subsumes all intrinsic attributes of nursing as a human helping discipline. Scholars have argued that caring is usually seen as an encounter between nurses and patients, but how about nurses with minimal or absent nurse-patient encounters, like informatics nurses? In this study, we explored the meaning of the phenomenon of caring to present lived experiences of caring, namely caring as actions of coming in between; caring as expressed within embodied relations; and caring and the path traversed by informatics nurses. The informatics nurse-cyborg-patient triad speaks of Filipino informatics nurses’ insightful understanding of the phenomenon of caring.

Registered nurses' descriptions of caring: a phenomenographic interview study

BACKGROUND

Nursing has come a long way since the days of Florence Nightingale and even though no consensus exists it would seem reasonable to assume that caring still remains the inner core, the essence of nursing. In the light of the societal, contextual and political changes that have taken place during the 21st century, it is important to explore whether these might have influenced the essence of nursing. The aim of this study was to describe registered nurses' conceptions of caring.

METHODS

A qualitative design with a phenomenographic approach was used. The interviews with twenty-one nurses took place between March and May 2013 and the transcripts were analysed inspired by Marton and Booth's description of phenomenography.

RESULTS

The analysis mirrored four qualitatively different ways of understanding caring from the nurses' perspective: caring as person-centredness, caring as safeguarding the patient's best interests, caring as nursing interventions and caring as contextually intertwined.

CONCLUSION

The most comprehensive feature of the nurses' collective understanding of caring was their recognition and acknowledgment of the person behind the patient, i.e. person-centredness. However, caring was described as being part of an intricate interplay in the care context, which has impacted on all the described conceptions of caring. Greater emphasis on the care context, i.e. the environment in which caring takes place, are warranted as this could mitigate the possibility that essential care is left unaddressed, thus contributing to better quality of care and safer patient care.