Attitudes of clinical nurses toward personal characteristics of alcoholics patients

The purpose of this exploratory study was to discover nurses' attitudes towards the perceptions of personal characteristics of alcoholics. Nurses' attitudes were measuared using the Seaman-Manello Scale, the sample consisted of 171 nurses who work in a university general hospital located in the State of S?o Paulo, Brazil. The results evidenced that more than half of the sample (52.4%) had a professional experience with alcoholics. Nurses see the alcoholic patients as unhappy, lonely, sensitive people, who doubt their own value and have serious emotional problems. It is concluded that nurses' attitudes toward personal characteristics of alcoholic patients tend to be positive and suggests greater attention to professional training in recognition and approach of the alcoholic in general hospitals.     

对护士人性化护理认知情况的调查分析

目的了解护士对人性化服务的认知情况,针对目前现状,提供有效的人性化服务,为真正实施、落实人性化护理提供理论依据.方法采用问卷随机对浙江省9家三级医院的119名护士和352名病人进行了调查.对护士进行人性化护理的认知调查,同时对护士和病人进行希望住院期间的饮食、信息、治疗时间的调查和比较.结果护理人员对人性化护理有错误认知所占比例较大,病人对饮食、休息、治疗时间的需求与护士的意愿有显著性差异.结论护理人员对人性化护理有错误认知,不能从病人角度真正满足病人需求,工作时间的安排以方便自己为前提.因此,需要进一步对护理人员进行人性化护理知识的宣传、培训,加大人性化护理管理的力度.     

Contesting the dominance of emotional labour in professional nursing.

PURPOSE: The main intension of this paper is to challenge the dominance of emotional labour in professional nursing. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The article begins by evaluating the central conceptual and definitional aspects of emotional labour, emotion work and emotional work. The purpose of this discussion is to argue against the false public and private dichotomy that has plagued emotional labour and emotion work. Second, it is proposed that the central and helpful defining aspects of emotional labour and emotion work are Marx's concepts of exchange-value and use-value. These defining attributes are used in conjunction with other re-conceptualisations, which unite these terms in order to create more encompassing constructs that are useful for focusing on the waged and unwaged aspects of professional nurses' emotional work response behaviours. Finally, the use of emotional labour in professional nursing is contested on the grounds that the construct has limited theoretical and empirical utility for researching the complex nature of professional nurses' emotional work response behaviours. FINDINGS: It is recommended that a more robust encompassing concept needs to be developed, which accurately reflects the nature and complexity of professional nurses' waged and unwaged emotional work response behaviours, as they are important overlooked facets of behaviour that can be theoretically related to professional nurses' contextual performance. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The paper provides a better understanding of professional nurses' emotional work response behaviours, which benefit nursing research and practice by drawing on other areas of theory and research.     

Re:living the body mass index: How A Lacanian autoethnography can inform public health practice

In this paper, I demonstrate how autoethnography can be utilized as a methodology to conduct public health research. My argument is structured around an application of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory which I see as supporting and extending a critical understanding of the so-called obesity epidemic and related issues. I argue that the body mass index (BMI) measure has achieved an unconscious position as a ‘Sovereign Good’ and, as such, provides the moral and ethical mechanism through which state-sanctioned science, via the wider weight-loss industry, prescribes people into a state of weight anxiety. I conclude that public health practitioners who find themselves promoting weight loss towards the ‘healthy’ range of the BMI are in an unethical position, one that should be entirely rejected. Instead I point to the ethics of desire as an alternative position that might help public health practitioners who are interested in actually improving public health.     

"返聘护士"导医队的实践与成效

为了最大限度的发挥护理集体的群体效应,重视和关注人的价值,返聘内退的高年资护士从事门诊大厅的导诊工作。从而改善了护理人员不足的现状,提高了高年资护士的工作积极性。阐明高年资护士是医院的宝贵财富,应充分发挥其潜能,发挥其整体效能。     

Autonomy, job satisfaction and professional self-image among nurses in the context of a physicians' strike

This paper tests the hypothesis that structural changes in nurses' work settings, which allow nurses to autonomously exercise their knowledge and skills will lead not only to an enhanced feeling of professional autonomy, but also to an improvement in their professional self-image and to an increase in job satisfaction. An opportunity to test this hypothesis arose when physicians in Israel went on a strike which lasted 116 days. Primary care (PC) clinics were completely abandoned by physicians, leaving nurses to operate them on their own, while in hospitals, nurses continued to work as usual under physicians' supervision. The study compares the effect of the strike on head nurses in the two sectors. Data were collected by means of self administered questionnaires. The findings indicate that during the strike, PC head nurses expanded their activities and responsibilities and consequently felt more professional autonomy and job satisfaction, as well as an improvement in professional self-image. Hospital head nurses experienced significantly less changes in their work situation and, as expected, less change in all work related attitudes. It is suggested that, when given the opportunity to define for themselves roles where they can use their experience, knowledge and skills, senior nurses stand up to the challenge and consequently are more satisfied and their professional self-image improves.     

Identity, emotion and the internal goods of practice: a study of learning disability professionals

Contemporary transitions in the delivery of health and social care are a global phenomenon. They prompt a particular need to reconsider how quality in relation to professional practice should be understood and whether greater importance should be attached to values such as goodwill, altruism and commitment. Based on a qualitative study of a small voluntary sector organisation in the North of England, this paper addresses how changes in policy articulate with the identities of professionals who work in learning disability services. Drawing on MacIntyre's After Virtue, which is discussed in relation to some recent sociological debates on emotion, it is suggested that professionals have an emotionally based commitment to their work as well as to the people they work with. Professional commitment is embedded in a coherent sense of self that problematises traditional binaries between the private and the public, and the cognitive and affective. The participants in this study appeared to pursue what MacIntyre terms the 'internal goods' of practice; they valued being able to work innovatively and responsively with service users. It is suggested that this requires a particular type of relationship with oneself, with others, and with practice, which engenders a criticality towards dominant professional discourses.     

Defining the "professional" nurse: an issue for providers, consumers

A survey conducted in Georgia reveals that 65 percent of hospital administrators and nursing directors oppose the ANA's resolution to make the BSN the entry-level requirement for professional nurses by 1985. While state nurses' associations and professional groups are formulating their positions, further research is necessary to determine the resolution's implications.     

Current questions of nursing care II]

Besides looking over and getting acquainted with the international problems of nursing it's necessary trying to establish the bearings of the situation in Hungary as well. Nursing is a major economical and humanitarian element which influences the people's mood, therefore its social aspects are more important then the professional questions. The central person of nursing is the nurse, whose selection, qualification and education is the privotal question of the whole activity. The expectable professional-social changes need humanly suitable practical people--who rest on firm foundations and who can hold on also in the fields of prevention, curing and rehabilitation. It's necessary to ensure the postgradual teaching, but only in the required number and degree; to solve the problems of higher grades education of nurse-teaching, the claim to the professional qualifications, which can result in the improvement of nurses' perspectives. If the appropriate professional preparedness is guaranteed the independent sphere of authority and responsibility have to be ensured for the nurses in the experiental organizing and researching work. Rising of the level of nursing has a favourable effect on medical work and an entirety of medical attendance. Doctors have decisive influences on the whole process; their interests in the problems and their activities in the solutions can be determinant.     

Managing stigma in adolescent HIV: silence,secrets and sanctioned spaces

Studies of female sexuality in Africa tend to adopt an instrumental approach, many times problematizing sexual conduct in relation to HIV infection and/or reproduction. This study aimed to explore sexuality as a relational concept. Using interviews and participant observation, the paper shows how sexuality becomes a point of self‐identification for young professional women in Nairobi between 20 and 30 years‐old. These women form a group who implicitly and explicitly criticize conventional gender roles through the overt pursuit of sexual pleasure as recognition of their womanhood. This aspect of the feminine sense of self is at odds with normative notions of femininity. To avoid criticism for being ‘un‐proper’, women adopt a deferential attitude towards men. The focus on upwardly mobile professional women and their experiments with new types of heterosexual relations in dating provides insight into both sexuality and gender.     

Pastoral power and the promotion of self‐care

In many countries government policy is becoming increasingly reliant on citizens taking greater responsibility for their health and wellbeing and limiting their consumption of public services. In this paper I develop Foucauldian perspectives on the work required to create and maintain responsibilised subjects, focusing on the role of ‘pastors’ – specialists, experts and therapists who promote desirable subjectivities (Waring and Latif 2017 ). Drawing from ethnographic research, I consider how government policies for the promotion of self‐care within the English healthcare system not only place increased emphasis on patients taking responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, but also seek to constitute new pastoral subjectivities as responsible for conducting the conduct of patients. I look at efforts to constitute pastoral subjectivities through an assemblage of management knowledge, educational practices and training materials. I argue that efforts to enrol and train pastors are unlikely to accomplish governmental objectives because of the availability of alternative guides for action drawn from professional training, established routines, and forms of social belonging.     

Strengths and weaknesses of Problem Based Learning from the professional perspective of registered nurses

OBJECTIVE:

to identify competency strengths and weaknesses as perceived by nursing professionals who graduated with a integrated curriculum and competency-based through Problem Based Learning in small groups.

METHOD:

an intrinsic case study method was used, which analyzes this innovation through former students (from the first class) with three years of professional experience. The data were collected through a questionnaire and discussion groups.

RESULTS:

the results show that their competency level is valued in a very satisfactory manner. This level paradoxically contrasts with the lack of theoretical knowledge they perceived at the end of their education, when they started working in clinical practice.

CONCLUSIONS:

the teaching strategy was key to motivate an in-depth study and arouse the desire to know. In addition, Problem Based Learning favors and reinforces the decision to learn, which is that necessary in the course of professional life.     

Reflections on the psychoanalytic representations of nurses about themselves and about nursing

This study describes some reflections on the representations of nurses about themselves and about nursing, in order to analyze them within a psychoanalytic framework of the constitution of the subject in the sphere of the desire which motivates them, at the levels of the imaginary and the symbolic. The analysis adopted was the discursive practices proposed by Spink, using association of ideas in the hermeneutical tradition. Considering the subject, eight nurses were interviewed whose interpretations were displayed on graphs and tables. From discourse analysis emerged meanings in the symbolic sphere and the production of meanings. It is possible to understand that the desire of the nurse shows itself as the desire of others' desire, an imaginary desire and therefore, it is imaginary and to be constituted. This object which appears identified with the self, may appear over-valued or commonplace, depreciated or punished. From this point of view, new horizons may open up in practice and professional training for nurses, which brings them together around a signifier which can give them a meaning, enabling them to see themselves as subjects in their professional expressiveness.     

Evidence-based care in nursing: reforms versus research, rhetoric versus reality.

The new evidence-based health care culture, together with nurses' demands for enhanced professional status, has embedded within its strategy the imperative to develop a corpus of nursing-specific research. These apparently compatible aims were intended to meet the need for enhanced professional status while at the same time enabling clinical nursing practice to be justified on scientific grounds. While the dual reform agendas brought with them the resistance that always accompanies radical amendments to the status quo, they also seem to have created an unanticipated reciprocal antagonism which has impeded the development of nursing research. The policy changes that were necessary to meet the prerequisites for professional status have had a detrimental effect on the potential for generating an adequate body of nursing research. This second paper discusses some of the key reforms to nursing that have been implemented over the last decade and their impact on nursing's progress towards creating its own esoteric research knowledge base that could inform clinical care. It is suggested that policy and research may be diametrically opposed, and that nursing, if it is committed to professionalization, may have to reconsider its allegiance to the scientific research culture in favor of achieving some of the other objectives on its agenda.     

Investigating the "self" in deliberate self-harm

In this study, the authors explored how a group of young people aged 16 to 26 years (who identified themselves as having engaged in deliberate self-harm) made sense of the self by conducting two online focus groups and four e-mail interviews. They analyzed data using interpretive phenomenological analysis. The concept of validation was the primary means of making sense of the self and concerned the desire to be considered legitimate and of worth. This desire was clearly evident across three realms of conflict: (a) the intrinsic or extrinsic self, which marked the distinction between objective fact and subjective opinion; (b) the accepted or denied self; and (c) the notion of normality. It is possible that having one's denied self validated online might lead to an exacerbation of an individual's self-harming behavior. Further work is needed to explore the effects of online discussion forums on such taboo forms of behavior.     

The motivation to care: application and extension of motivation theory to professional nursing work

PURPOSE: The purpose of this research is to describe a model of nurses' work motivation relevant to the human caring stance of professional nursing work. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The model was derived from selected theories of behavioral motivation and work motivation. Evidence-based theory addressing nurses' work motivation and nurses' motivational states and traits in relation to characteristics of organizational culture and patient health outcomes is suggested in an effort to make a distinct contribution to health services research. An integrated review of selected theories of motivation is presented, including conceptual analyses, theory-building techniques, and the evidence supporting the theoretical propositions and linkages among variables intrinsic to nurses' work motivation. FINDINGS: The model of the Motivation to Care for Professional Nursing Work is a framework intended for empirical testing and theory building. The model proposes specific leadership and management strategies to support a culture of motivational caring and competence in health care organizations. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Attention to motivation theory and research provides insights and suggests relationships among nurses' motivation to care, motivational states and traits, individual differences that influence nurses' work motivation, and the special effects of nurses' work motivation on patient care outcomes. Suggestions for nursing administrative direction and research are proposed.     

Life-circumstances, working conditions and HIV risk among street and nightclub-based sex workers in Lusaka, Zambia

The principal objective of this study was to conduct formative research among sex workers in Lusaka, Zambia, to understand how sex workers' perceptions of their personal identity influences safer sex practices. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 sex workers in Lusaka, Zambia, including both nightclub and street-based sex workers. Findings indicate important differences of self perception and identity between nightclub-based sex workers and street-based sex workers. The latter have a professional identity and are willing to be publicly acknowledged as sex workers. This makes it easier for them to convince clients to use condoms. In contrast, nightclub-based sex workers are less likely to wish to be identified as sex workers. They are motivated by the desire to meet a man who will perhaps marry them and change their lives. As a consequence, they do not publicly acknowledge their risk of STI/HIV infection and many go against their better judgement by not using condoms. Factors such as the stigmatization of sex work, the harassment of sex workers and the lack of protection available to them interact with sex workers' perceptions of their personal identities and influence their ability to take precautions during high-risk sexual encounters.     

Adding insult to injury: workplace injury in English professional football

Sociologists studying the topic of workplace injury have neglected professional athletes despite the fact that, for such employees, remaining 'active' at work is of paramount importance. This study involved semi-structured interviews with 47 current and former male professional footballers who all had careers in the English professional football leagues. The interviews focused on the players' experiences of injury and rehabilitation and their relationships with club managers, physiotherapists and doctors. The object of this empirical article concerns an examination of how professional footballers become, or perceive themselves as being, stigmatised when they are injured or in pain. For players, the social conditions of work, for example the internal competition for places, all have implications with respect to their presentation of self when they are claiming to be injured or in pain. The often conflict-ridden relations between players and managers, combined with a culture that normalises pain and injury, means that players often find themselves in health-compromising situations. Thus, examining this highly physical vocation provides an opportunity to add to the literature in which injury at work is socially produced through interpretive social interaction.     

Slavery and jouissance: analysing complaints of suffering in UK and Australian nurses' talk about their work

Nursing has a gendered and religious history where ideas of duty and servitude are present and shape its professional identity. The profession also promotes idealized notions of relationships with patients and of professional autonomy both of which are, in practice, highly constrained or even impossible. This paper draws on psychoanalytic concepts in order to reconsider nursing's professional identity. It does this by presenting an analysis of data from two focus group studies involving nurses in England and Australia held between 2010 and 2012. The studies gave rise to data where extremely negative talk about nursing work seemed to produce, or to be expressed with, a high degree of energy, and a particular kind of enjoyment. In our analysis, we focus on the nurses' apparent enjoyment derived from their expression of a position of powerlessness in which they describe themselves as ‘slaves’ or ‘martyrs’ in the health care system. We interpret this as jouissance and suggest that the positions of slave or martyr provide a possible response to what we argue is the impossibility of the nurse's role. We argue that a remnant of a quasi‐religious ethic within the profession makes it acceptable for nurses to talk about self‐sacrifice and powerlessness as part of their working subjectivity. We further argue that this analysis offers a new consideration of the issue of power and professional identity in nursing that goes beyond seeing nurses as simply overpowered by, or engaged in, a gendered power struggle with other professional groups. We suggest that powerlessness and victimhood hold particular attractions and advantages for nurses and are positions that are more available to nurses than to other occupational groups. This research shows how psychoanalytic theory can help produce new insights into the problems and complexity of nursing and extend existing study of the professions.