Friday evening I walked home from school around 8:00 in flip flops. It was December 1st and 71 degrees (that's 21 celsius to all you non-Americans I imagine are reading my blog). The temperature fell 30 degrees that night and by the time I went to work at the pharmacy on Saturday it was cold enough to freeze an uncovered pinky toe.
Life is changing almost as quickly. Today as everyone held their breath at the first sign of snow flakes, I arrived at my first job interview for a registered nurse position. In the interview, I was asked who my favorite nursing theorist is. Nursing theory may sound counter intuitive, but here's the thing: patients don't recover from a couple medications, an x-ray, and a blood test or two. It's not a math problem that works out if you have the right formula. A nurse's method of discovering the individual needs of each patient and deciding how to address them can hinge on strict science, on religion, on whim, or on nursing theory. And there are many nursing theories.
My answer to his question was Martha Rogers. When I watched an interview with her last year, her ideas about energy fields and unitary human beings went over about as well as my last horoscope, and I didn't see a way to apply it a clinical practice. I've since read more about Rogerian science and realized it's about a capacity to make changes. It's a positive theory. Unlike linear development theories like Erickson, with certian benchmarks of development (I hate benchmarks), Rogers considers life to be a process of continually repositioning oneself around unpredictable fluctuations in our environment. In a Rogers world, a nurse wouldn't assign a careplan for kidney failure, she would lend her energy toward helping the patient make individual choices about their health. All I know is if it were me in the bed, I would want my nurse to see more than a clogged artery, and ultimately when a patient leaves the hospital they will have to make their own health decisions anyway so why focus on the afflicted body part when it's the whole person that's doing the afficting. In the U.S., the most common causes of hospitalization are preventable or controllable illnesses. Nurses can't just pass out some pills and call it a day. So that's one theory.
A year ago I hadn't even finished a semester of nursing school and now I'm about to begin my career. The countdown continues: 14 days, 13 hours.
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Can I add a little something to your obviously well-considered Rogerian view?
"All illnesses are family illnesses," because not just the one patient is affected by hospitalization. Everyone aroung them is also. Not very profound, but I thought it was important enough to mention.
Once while inserting a foley into an obese confused female everyone else was too busy to help me. I had to hold one of her bent knees aside and out of the way with my head.
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