NURS 1001- Current Issues in Nursing Practice

What do you think the current issues issues in Nursing are?

Issues Facing Nursing

• Pandemic

• Critical shortages

• Scope of Practice

• Wrestling with our history

• Advocay and Social justice

• Changing work

• Moving beyond “tasks”, seeing nursing work as more

Nursing Shortage

• Boom and bust cycle

Recruitment & Retention

• What is being offered?

• What is missing?

• Is the focus in the right place?

• Big bonus but doesnt tell you about staying for years ina certain area

• Tuition reimbursement if you stay in a certain area

• In rural northern communities they are offering additional northern benefits on top of pay

• Relocation bonus’

• Education initiatives

• Focus is on money, not on quality of life, work/life balance, vacation

Mythbusting

• Its not about money!

• Safe & appropriate staffing & resources

• work/life balance

• Sense of control & being heard

• Pay

• Development opportunities

  • 80/20 school-work, 20 is not enough

  • Short staffed means reschedule your other duties

  • Does not work for rural hospitals

  • Be carful of what the collecitve agreement says, know what the language says

• Relationships & support

What is happening/being proposed?

• Create policy dictating a minimum nurse-to-patient or, in non-acute health-care settings, a minimum care standard

  • Staffing levels can shift

  • We dont have anthing about patient-nurse ratios

• Integrate nurses in Canada with international education and training

  • Ha sbeene disgracful

• Increase float team/pool capacity

  • Acute-care centric

  • Float teams are not assigned to a particular unit

  • Can be good with developing hands on skills

  • Can have surge staffing

• Implement a support team to reduce non-nursing duties

  • Help to porter rooms, assist patients

  • Do the easy roles to lessen the load on nurses

  • Clincal extern

  • NGG

• Use eveidence-based tools and processes to address heavy workloads

  • Workload measuring

• Pan-candian licensure

  • Any province or tertiorty with your license

  • Can get different licensures to work in other provinces or territories

The Federal Toolkit

Privatization & Capitalism

• Whos making money off these services?

• Concern is that many of these agencies are popping up, but who is making money?

• Whos interests are best served? How are we facilitating those who most need our help when theres privtization?

Changing Scope of Practice

• RNs in Ontario are able to prescribe from a restricted list of medications (Birth control, drugs for smoking sensation)

• Will help reduce wait times in ontario

• Gaps in care, Gaps in service

• If there was value in it, we wouldve seen a faster implementation of it (looks on how nurses are honoured)

The Effects of the Pandemic

• uncertainty and fear,

  • Virus are always changing, SARS

• alteration of perceptions of time and space,

• change in the meaning of ‘to care’ and

• changes in roles and relationships.

  • Compassion fatigue

• Moral/psychological distress & compassion fatigue

Moral Deteminents of Health

• Shift in thinking about our role when caring for those who have lots of needs/ complexities

Moral Deteminants

Marmot:6 categories:

• conditions of birth and early childhood,

• education,

• work,

• the social circumstances of elders,

• a collection of elements of community resilience (such as transportation, housing, security, and a sense of community self-efficacy), and,

• cross-cutting all, what he calls “fairness,” which generally amounts to a sufficient redistribution of wealth and income to ensure social and economic security and basic equity.

But theres more…

• Gun violence

• Environmental racism and the effects of climate change

• Loneliness

• Access

• Flooding that happens

• Indigenous communities are most affected

• cawisa

Unleashing the Power of Nursing

Reconciling out past

• Look to our history with many different views: from Nightingale to Marie Branch

• Perpetuating many of the same behaviours & responses

• How history has shaped our reality

  • Marie opened up a clinic for people who couldnt get to or afford care

Marie Branch

• “Nursing has the power to effect radical change in ways other health professions cannot”

  • Have the ability to affect change

  • Different levels

• She saw nursing as singularly “free to innovate and improve practice,” unencumbered by either elitism or payment models which prioritized quantity over quality

  • Most important

  • Not tied to money

  • You get paid the same no matter how many patients are seen

• In order to fulfill its revolutionary potential, however, the field would need to adopt a philosophy she named “ethnic humanism,”

Changing nursing practice/changing nursing education

• Think about how were all connected to support those who need care

Advocacy

History

• All the things weve seen in healthcare settings today have became from advocacy

• Challenging stigma

• Supporting those who no one else will

• Humanity of Nursing & patient-centered care

• Nurses of 5B

  • Unit of a hospital in sanfran

  • Only one willing to take HIV and Aids patients

  • We didnt know tranmsission, lots of myths about HIV/Aids

  • These nurses took initiative to do the work

Activism Gets Results

• Nurses at policy tables

• ONA

  • Lori dupont (nurse murded by fellow collegue doctor)

Is this the work of nurses?

Supporting Safe Consumption

• Corey ranger

• @nurseranger

Locally-

So why Understand Current Issues?

• To know whats happening and be aware of that

• Shannon knew there was a need for more mental health supports and work towards it

• It is part of your nursing story

Your Nursing Story

Nursing- Broaden the lens