I skimmed an article that read - "How to Make the Nursing Profession Disappear". It went further to elaborate that This involves breaking down the role of the nurse into its constituent parts. Generally, the more specialized the area within which nurses work, the easier this is to do.
split off all the aspects of the role that nurses traditionally performed, once separated from the whole, the role can be performed by lesser qualified, or equally qualified but cheaper, or unqualified staff, and we put these aside.
is there a problem??
Efforts to improve quality need to be measured to demonstrate “whether ... There are two types of benchmarking that can be used to evaluate patient safety and ... bed capacity of a hospital, and number of nurses with advanced training
It might be that non-nursing professions think about such scenarios. One argument for the holistic nursing process is still the link between higher education/qualification in nursing and patient mortality.
Just to name one source https://online.stmary.edu/msn/resources/higher-nursing-education-impact-on-patient-safety
I had a quick look at this link:
https://www.ausmed.co.uk/cpd/articles/make-nursing-profession-disappear
I was surprised that this was not thought of as the norm. When I first qualified (in the mid 1970s) I went to work at a local hospital for older people in the UK, and I was one of very few registered nurses. The other members of staff were either state enrolled nurses or nursing auxiliaries. This was basic nursing, and I took part in the nursing care, but also carried out administration and other tasks that came under the role of registered nurses, regarding the care prescribed by the non-resident doctors, staff off duty and other similar tasks.
During my training in a London teaching hospital, I had worked on wards there the majority of the staff were various grades of nurses / trainee nurses, but when I returned to my home town, I worked (for 13 years) at the hospital described above. Because of the type of work, I don't think it would have been appropriate for all the staff members to have been registered nurses.
I think it depends on the type of nursing that is being carried out.
Chopping up any work into constituent bits is a typical Taylorian way of efficiency. You can build a car on an assembly line and even there it was proven that fewer mistakes are made and the workers are more satisfied if they work in self-managed groups. With every interface a loss of information occurs and in a medical situation this is deadly.
From an organisational-psychoanalytical point of view, the following:
Could it be viewed as an attack on nursing? An attack on the power of women and an attack on dependency? People want to be in control and to be in the powers of a woman can provoke deep anxiety in people because it reminds them of the helpless state of the baby they once were. Or it is an attack on nursing now that they have more professional recognition and better salaries that go with that? In that case, professional nursing has to be broken down into low-qualified activities and denigrated down into low status housekeeping kind of activities. What these people don't realize is that they not only dehumanise the nursing professional but also the patient who become a bundle of bodily functions, all dirt and piss and gore. It seems to be deep existential phantasies at work here.
The nursing profession requires a global knowledge that financiers do not like very much because it helps to build republican power ...
What the imperialists want is to compartmentalize work in order to remain in control and subject people to their diktats.
Over the past decade, they have caused the nursing profession to regress by unduly prolonging university studies to force caregivers to acquire such or such a title ...
And they have displayed greater disregard than ever for the experience and self-directed training that caregivers de facto acquire close to their patients in this profession requiring continuous upgrading.
The establishment of "specialized nurse practitioners" has led us to the underhand establishment of a new elitist category within our profession...
It significantly reduced our overall capacity and simultaneously increased our complacency to the medical profession...
We cannot speak out anymore about the various abuses of power secretly perpetrated by millionaire doctors in this globalist empire ...
Yes it is happening! Please see Jennifer Jackson's publications and twitter feed:
pic.twitter.com/HlwHaID6zL
I don’t want to use Twitter. Do you have a link to the article? Thanks!
Lilian Hupkens
Hello! No, I don't use Twitter either. I think this is the same person on ResearchGate: Jennifer Jackson
;her publications are listed:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer_Jackson25/research
I hope whet you want is there. You could always follow her and send a message?
Mary C R Wilson : I found it and have asked for a full text. Thanks!
Lilian Hupkens
I expect Jennifer is a very busy person; if she does not see her ResearchGate messages very frequently, you could always contact her at her university:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/jennifer-jackson
Jennifer Jackson also has a website:
http://jenniferjacksonrn.org/nursing-work/what-do-nurses-do/
Lucinda Mithen
Thank you; I have just been looking at the website for Jennifer Jackson
that you included in your response; an excellent site. I looked into resilience a few years ago and read quite a lot about it. So was interested to explore the resilience section of her site. I see that she has also written articles about resilience.Although it's very worrying, it's lovely to have a discussion that does not revolve around COVID-19.
Stay safe, everyone,
Mary
I am of the contrary opinion. Promoting specialization in nursing doesn't really amount to 'deconstructing the role of a nurse' In my opinion, specialization has helped in recognition of the many roles played by the nurse unnoticed by other health professionals and the society at large. Remember the rationale for specialization may be to enhance the quality of care provided to the patient/ clients. It follows then that the level of care delivered by a general nurse may not be equal to the one delivered by the specialized nurse. In such, it therefore may not be possible for the 'split' role of a nurse be performed by the lesser qualified. conclusively, it may therefore be said that specialization construct rather than deconstructs the role of a nurse.
Dear colleague, thank you very much for your contributions, it is always good to share concerns among equals.
Greetings
In nursing's challenge to be recognized as an industry outside of medicine, the nursing industry demanded that we become specialized. This resulted in the great strides nursing has made especially in research. I think deconstructing the roles played by nurses would have a negative impact of healthcare in general. Many patients are dependent upon advanced nursing practices.
I have been in nursing a long time and during my career I've seen jobs taken away from nurses and jobs re-added to nurses. In 1991 I was learning how to do chest x-rays because it was determined that nurses would improve quality outcomes--that went by the wayside and I was next taught to intubate and place chest tubes--again, this was taken away. I have been a nurse in Japan where respect for nursing is minimal and much of what they do is managed by machines (medication dosing, labs etc.). I am not of the mindset that nursing is sacred and that we can't be replaced--what I do know is the research shows patients are safer and happier and get out of hospitals sooner because of the nursing care and advocacy they receive. I think when it comes to preserving nursing as a profession, nurses need to have a unified mindset about the role we perform and the expertise we bring to the table. Nurses need to learn to speak for themselves and make sure they continuously and cohesively speak to the value nursing brings. I am familiar with 3 theorists who speak to the unique value of nursing, Jean Watson, Dorothea Orem, and Patricia Benner.
On my side, I think we can't reconstruct nursing but there is development in nursing.
https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/feb/25/nurses-future-nhs-five-year-forward#img-1.
The changing role of nurses within the NHS
Hello Kapinga Ngoyi
I would like to have read your link, but I think it has changed. Do you have another version? Thanks. I'm long retired but I like to hear about what if going on at the grass roots. I still belong to the RCN.
I enjoyed reading the response above by Kim Mejia about the additional roles that she had learnt, but then were taken away. When I was working (nurse practitioner for bladder and bowel health on the community), I used to think that if I could do something that had not been in my previous practice - for example - urethral dilatation in men with strictures (a lot were quite elderly) it meant that those who we saw could continue to be treated by a nurse who they had got to know. We did learn and carry out quite a few roles that were not, initially, in our workload.
Hi Mery, try this one
https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/feb/25/nurses-future-nhs-five-year-forward.
Thank you Kapinga Ngoyi
I have downloaded the pdf Five Year Forward View, and had a brief look at it, but have not read it in detail yet.
I have seen such a lot of changes since I first trained in 1971, as an SRN but later we were termed RGN. The nurses' role has developed and I was lucky to work as an advanced practitioner for bladder and bowel health (nurse practitioner), where I was working with my own caseload. Some needed quite complex intervention but I was grateful for the fact that if I felt that if someone could adequately be treated by a non-specialist nurse, I could delegate, or, in the other direction, I felt it necessary to refer onwards, I could refer to the general practitioner. Usually it was the case that there would be a referral to the consultant.
So it was a role that I enjoyed and that developed me and certainly never caused me to be bored!
Now I'll look at the pdf! Thanks again,
Mary
I agree with Dr Hermann Gruenwald but also feel that COVID-19 made many nurses' roles a lot more dangerous than they would have been otherwise and nurses became infected by the virus through their nursing. But they continued to nurse.
I don’t see why nurses are expected to sacrifice their lives by not having received proper working materials. Nursing is a profession, not a calling from God as nuns who often worked as nurses. I don’t see why nurses are expected to sacrifice their lives as opposed to medical doctors. Are women disposable? Men not?
We have to be careful not to confuse the cultural concepts of “women” in society, sisters as in nuns, unmarried women who devoted their lives to caring for the sick, and the professional nurse with a college education.
The conflation of these concepts are the cause of many problems in hospitals today who cannot get enough nurses. Many leave the profession due to being overworked, under-paid and insufficiently recognised. Warm words and applause do not pay the bills or keep you going for a long time in demanding work situations.
Caring for others is a true advance in the process of hominization and humanization, linked - according to some authors - to the female condition (see Collière); But, whether it is a feminine, masculine OR BOTH SEX praxis, as we believe, over time, caring has become the main function of a Profession: Nursing. As caring for and being cared for is essential for the survival of the species, Nursing has progressed until reaching, in most countries, a University level and, furthermore, of excellence.
In addition, such Profession is generally made up of excellent Professionals and great people who, with their vocation, dedication, empathy, overexertion and sacrifices help society in general and, in particular, those most in need in especially difficult circumstances in order to implement the best possible levels of biopsychosocial health. This has become especially evident now with Covid-19, but it was and is with HIV / AIDS, with the misnamed "Spanish flu", with Diphtheria or Crup -with extremely high levels of mortality among these dedicated Professionals-, in Disasters and Catastrophes, in War Conflicts and, in short, in any individual or collective vicissitude where they have been precise throughout History, because - if the simile is allowed - they constitute the Health Sciences Infantry ... For all these reasons, such a Profession will not only not disappear, but will also have to grow and be strengthened since, if it is true that all Professions are important and necessary, SOME ARE ESSENTIAL AND, THE NURSING IS IT!
SORRY:
for all that, such Profession will not only not disappear but it will have to grow and be strengthened since, if it is true that all Professions are important and necessary, SOME ARE ESSENTIAL AND, THE NURSING IS IT!