There was a lot of excellent discussion about professionalization or nursing and public policy on the discussion forums for Module One. Do you know what frustrates me the most about nursing (and scholars in general, really): A near complete lack of public intellectual scholarship. We don't talk to people! For the most part, we (faculty, that is) spend our time writing to be published rather than writing to be read. When we do write for an audience, it is typically for other scholars and peer-reviewed journals rather than for the lay public. I believe that we should be writing for an intelligent audience that lies outside of nursing. 

Especially considering the current climate of concern re: healthcare costs. Nursing has the answer to many of the problems facing American healthcare today, but we elect not to discuss these answers with the public for some reason. We tell our hospital administrators in the hopes they will do something, and we publish in journals that other nurses and academic read, but we do not publish in newspapers, online lay journals, and books that describe healthcare from our perspective.

My questions are these: 

• Why not? 
• How can we change?
• What might be some of the consequences of making waves? 
• How can we manage those waves as individuals and as a profession?

Sadly, my expertise lies in nursing education, and I therefore have little to contribute to this particular discussion from a standpoint of authority. We need to encourage practical-minded scholars –that is, nurse scholars who have one foot in academia and one foot in practice– and practicing professional nurses such as yourselves to take this ball and run with it. Who has ideas for how to get things started? I've done my best as a teacher of graduate and doctoral students, but there seems to be little reward for authors of such publications in a conventional sense. Still, is this not what is necessary to be a patient advocate? Did I miss something, or is patient advocacy not still our primary imperative as professional nurses?

Professional development

My biggest wonder around this time is "How do these students, who are finishing their capstone. feel about having nearly completed their bachelor's degrees?" Until I advanced my own education, I always felt that as baccalaureate meant little or nothing, simply because it typically didn't mean any more money. "If it was important," I would think to myself, "then they would be paid more." But I eventually came to realize that it wasn't so much about what you earned, but about what you were doing. While many RNs with BS degrees do work in the same positions as those without BS degrees, the baccalaureate opens a number of doors that would have hitherto been closed. It give you options. So who is exercising those options? Who wants to stay where they are? Does anyone feel any difference?  

For me, coming to TWU was a form of professional development. I had not previously taught doctoral students until I began working here and I have learned a tremendous amount in the past four years about doctoral education. That experience has given me options. Like yourself, I now have the ability and the vision to undertake different work than I did a few short years ago. It seems like whenever I look back a few years and reflect on my life, I see that I've changed and grown enormously in a short period of time.

What better way could there be to live than in constant growth? "Growth for the sake of growth," said John Dewey, referring to learning in order to develop the ability to learn more, was the primary goal of education. He was talking about students who were children, but I find that the same goes for teachers who are adults - or at least for me. I feel that I am at much the same stage that I perceive you to be: I have grown significantly and am ready for new challenges!

Am I wrong about that with you? Is the BS just a piece of paper? Or is it something more? Did you always feel that way or has something changed while you've been in the program?

Spring 2010 underway!

I'm back, and settled, and ready to go! I've been in communication with a few of you, and see that others are humming along nicely. How exciting it must be for you to be getting your BS! Will many of you be changing jobs? I'm looking forward to beginning reading your blogs in Module Two, but you have another week or two before that comes. Make sure you let me know if you have questions or need anything. The Help! forum on Bb is also a great way to get help from classmates (many of whom may have already had to wrestle with the same question or problem). I hope your semester if off to as good a start as mine!