Huzzah! Today’s #RNgoogledoodle No. 3 e-mail was sent quite late. BUT! Take note of time sent. Everybody knows nurses are superstitious, no exclusions here. I’ll take it.
Today was an easy choice. If you haven’t read Patricia Benner, well, you should. I have nerd-nurse dreams of meeting her someday.
Don’t forget to sign and share to get American nurses our first Google Doodle this National Nurses Day (no need to list full address, if that’s a deterrent): http://chn.ge/1mNUj2c
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Why Nurses Need a Google Doodle: #RNgoogledoodle No. 3
April 8, 2014 10:10PM.
Dear Doodlers,
It’s been a long day. My life goes a lot like the saying, “…a nurse’s work is never done,” these days. Don’t get me wrong, spending hours with NYC’s finest scholars and champions of urban administration inspires me to do things like sit in the library after class and write to you. But I’m a tad tired.
A friend of mine asked me recently for a book suggestion to give to a friend who plans to enter the nursing profession. Easy. Patricia Benner’s From Novice to Expert. If there is any book as influential to my career as this one, I’ve long forgotten it. Benner, who is #RNgoogledoodle Innovator No. 3, has literally been given the title Living Legend by the esteemed American Academy of Nursing, and I have no doubt why: even I, a lowly bedside nurse knows why she is a superstar.
Benner’s book revolutionized the way nurses were educated, evaluated, trained. I first read her masterpiece when I was a scared new graduate nurse, fresh out of a Bachelor’s program. When she said a novice is one that waits for direction, she was right. I barely moved out of the shadow of my training nurse during my first month in the crazy ICU where my nursing days began. But now, seven years into my career, I think I could say that I’m hedging on expert. I’ve got a grip on clinical situations before they occur, and my intuition guides me most of the time. I said to a nurse colleague the other day, “Man, doesn’t it feel great when you just feel this job?” Benner penned my feeling long before I was a nurse – the realization the work you are doing might just be exquisite nursing.
What I value most about her work, which spans disciplines from nursing, to education, to the science of stress and coping, is that she has focused so much of it on trying to quantify the art of caring. I have worked far too many shifts under the strain of competition between doctors and nurses, wondering why we are fighting to out-do one another when our functions are completely different. I, the nurse, am no diagnostician, just as much as the doctor is not a “care-er.” Yet, the science of medicine is easily measured, while caring so often seems an intangible art. In an article entitled The Wisdom of Our Practice, for The American Journal of Nursing’s centennial issue, Benner suggested instead “…that caring is the core of nursing practice because it renders technical, curative procedures tolerable and safe, helping patients and families weather their illnesses and sustain or regain familiar lifeworlds.”
Well, if that’s not innovative, I give up.
Zzzz,
Amanda Anderson, RN
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http://books.google.com/books?id=tMsQAQAAMAAJ&q=from+novice+to+expert&dq=from+novice+to+expert&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yqpEU6XHNrS_sQSnoILYDA&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA
Amanda J. Anderson 