Post 1 QX
ON week 5 of preceptorship, a few registered nurses (RNs) from Baptist Health Care went on a field trip to speak with a nursing class students in the University of West Florida. It was an eye-opening experience. A few students approached us after the talk and stated that they were planning on going to the other hospitals in the area, but after our talk, they are reconsidering their path. They were given honest absolute truth. We weren’t trying to divert them to the path they have chosen for themselves, but they must realize that nursing is not easy. It is definitely not for the faint of heart. We are in the business of saving lives, and lives for that matter are complicated. The perception of the image of nursing profession sometimes correlates with the quality of care (Grinberg & Sela, 2022). When you are just finishing tasks because you have so many patients, the quality of care can suffer. We have three big hospitals around the area where I live. West Florida Hospital and Sacred Heart look the best outside because they are newer buildings. Baptist Health Care is old although they are planning to move to a bigger and new building in 2023. West Florida RNs take in as much as 8 patients daily, Sacred Heart up to 7, and Baptist up to 6. When I take in that sixth patient, I know my quality of care decreases because 6 patients is just too much (Rekisso et al., 2022). Patient safety suffers. Quality of care suffers.
References:
Grinberg, K., & Sela, Y. (2022). Perception of the image of the nursing profession and its relationship with quality of care. BMC Nursing, 21(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-022–00830-4
Rekisso, A. D., Mengistu, Z., & Wuriine, T. H. (2022). Nurses’ attitudes towards the nursing profession and associated factors in selected public hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2021: a cross-sectional study. BMC Nursing, 21(1), 1-9. https://doi.orh/10.1186/s12912-022-00808-2
Post 2-jm
Social justice and social change are two themes woven into healthcare and, in particular, nursing (Thurman & Pfitzinger-Lippe, 2017). Social justice refers to equitable distribution and access to resources for positive health outcomes (Abu, 2020). Social and political barriers to equitable healthcare threaten the global population’s health and must be eliminated (Valderama-Wallace, 2017). Nurses witness healthcare disparities and thus should be equipped to advocate for patients in the healthcare setting and on social and political levels (Thurman & Pfitzinger-Lippe, 2017).
Nurse educators can promote social change and equitable healthcare by intentionally including these themes in nursing curricula. Nurse educators can help nursing students and nurses recognize disparities within systems and teach them how to act as change agents. Read et al. (2016) encourage nurse educators to be intentionally inclusive in leadership development programs to ensure fair representation of groups that may typically experience barriers to leadership opportunities.
As a nurse educator, I plan to keep the themes of social justice and social change as an integral part of the lessons I teach and in every environment I teach. I will remind nurses and nursing students that we impact patients’ lives in the moment of our interactions with them and outside of those moments as we advocate for social change and influence policies. Achieving certifications as a nurse educator will show my commitment to the profession and the patients, nurses, and nursing students with whom I directly interact. Certifications distinguish specialties, recognize knowledge and skills, strengthen competencies, and demonstrate excellence in practice (Caputi, 2016). Becoming certified will help me to be a stronger and more effective leader, preceptor, and mentor.
References
Abu, V. K. (2020). Let us be unequivocal about social justice in nursing. Nurse education in practice, 47, 102849. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2020.102849
Caputi, L. (2016). Competency and certification. In S. Cannon & C. Boswell (Eds.), Evidence-based teaching in nursing: A foundation for educators (2nd ed., pp. 275-296). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Read, C. Y., Pino Betancourt, D. M., & Morrison, C. (2016). Social change: A framework for inclusive leadership: Development in nursing education. Journal of Nursing Education, 55(3), 164-167. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20160216-08
Thurman, W., & Pfitzinger-Lippe, M. (2017). Returning to the profession’s roots: Social justice in nursing education for the 21st century. Advances in Nursing Science, 40(4), 316-318.
Valderama-Wallace, C. P. (2017). Critical discourse analysis of social justice in nursing’s foundational documents. Public Health Nursing, 34(4), 363-369.