Power and effective nursing practice

Underlying the Nursing Knowledge Program were the beliefs that professionals can be prepared to function more effectively in organizations and that organizations can be designed to promote better use of professional skills. The training program, therefore, included both educational and structural solutions for the problems of powerlessness experienced by nurses in the hospital setting. Educationally, the program was designed to empower the participating nurses by teaching them the analytic and interpersonal skills they needed to develop and implement plans for change. Structurally, it established new lines of communication between staff nurses and nurse administrators, linked the nurses to needed resources, and gave the nurses more control over working conditions. Due to the quasi-experimental nature of the research design used in the project, the findings cannot be generalized to all nurses in all hospitals. There is no question, however, that each of the four strategies can be a valuable administrative approach for increasing nursing power. Confirming the strategies and moving groups of nurses through a series of activities specifically designed to use the strategies can bring significant change in the perceptions of nurses about themselves and their profession. For the administrator, the strategies are a way to develop a more effective and satisfied nursing staff, to encourage new leadership, and to create a stronger constituency among staff members. They also create a new source of energy and ideas for resolving the very real problems of professional practice.     

Power and knowledge in nursing practice: the contribution of Foucault

This paper explores the implications of Michel Foucault's philosophical analyses for understanding nursing practice Foucault describes power within a given society as unfolding not through large-scale events but rather through a complex'micro-physics' Power operates upon the human body With the increasing use of observation, in understanding both the natural and social world, the body has become the subject of the'gaze' The body as object, however, is neither a universal belief nor truth but a product of ways of perceiving and examining it In relation to nursing, the subjection of the body to the'gaze' and the practices of the institutional environment of the hospital are important for understanding the knowledge formulated The power of practice is in the generation of knowledge The nature and form of knowledge is instrumental in establishing the quality of nurse-patient relationships This paper explores, through the particular exemplar of the patient in intensive care, the power of present practices to shape knowledge, and thereby dictate and limit the quality of the nurse-patient relationship     

Power and practice: A critique of evidence-based practice for the profession of speech-language pathology

This study investigated individual differences in vocabulary acquisition in 8 – 9-year-old children with impaired reading comprehension. Despite fluent and accurate reading, age-appropriate phonological skills and normal nonverbal ability, poor comprehenders are poor at understanding what they have read, and they show a variety of oral language weaknesses in the non-phonological domain. In this experiment, children were taught to associate new phonological forms to pictures of novel objects (phonological learning) and taught semantic information about the objects (semantic learning). Poor comprehenders needed as many trials as control children to learn phonological forms, suggesting they are well-equipped with the skills needed to learn labels for new objects. However, their knowledge of the meaning of the new words was relatively weak and not well-consolidated over time. These findings suggest that the source of poor comprehenders' difficulties with lexical learning may be localized to the semantic rather than phonological component of vocabulary learning. Implications for understanding the nature of the relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary skills are discussed.     

Power: an application to the nursing image and advanced practice

When asked to put a mental picture to the word nurse, the image people see is often far removed from the image nurses wish to project. Many see nurses as the handmaidens to physicians, wearing white caps and stockings, and surrendering their chairs to physicians. Others see unflattering images from the media. Nursing's tarnished image is partially responsible for a perception of oppression in nursing. Much of nursing's image problem relates to how nurses perceive and use power. Regardless of how nurses perceive power, it is through power that advanced practice nurses (APNs) will be acknowledged as members of a profession versus an occupation. With a better understanding of power, APNs may be able to improve their use of power to advance the profession. This article presents and discusses power through a review of the literature in order to better understand the term as it applies to advanced practice nursing.     

Collaborative practice in advanced practice nursing in acute care

APN in the United States encompasses a variety of collaborative models of care. Collaborative relationships with other disciplines such as medicine, pharmacy, social service, and physical, respiratory, and occupational therapy are an important component of the APN role. The collaborative relationship of the APN and physician is a unique one for providing optimal patient and family care. As changes in healthcare in acute care settings continue to occur, additional collaborative models for APN and physician care will only continue to help in meeting the healthcare needs of patients.     

Pain in practice

The BVA Animal Welfare Foundation (BVA:AWF) has been running its ‘Pain in Practice Workshop’ annually for a number of years, and the most recent took place at the Postgraduate Medical Centre in Birmingham on November 11, 1992. Harriet Steed, VN, was among the nursing delegates and here she describes the day's events.     

Prejudice in practice

The RCN and Terrence Higgins Trust are encouraging healthcare workers to challenge bigotry towards people who are HIV positive.