Nurses' Use of Spiritual Practices in Caring for Self During the Pandemic.

Stressful life events often disrupt individuals' assumptive world, challenging their self-identity and altering their lives. Suffering from stressful life events may have a profound negative impact on a person's life. Nurses felt great demands on their spiritual selves even as they responded to the grave situations and caring demands needed to care for the spirits of their patients during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, with intentionality, suffering and stress can be ameliorated by engaging in spiritual self-care and self-renewing activities. Spirituality is recognized as an essential factor in a person's health and well-being and is integral to the process of growing through life events, such as illness, grief, and bereavement. Nurses may choose to use spiritual practices, either religious or nonreligious, to buffer the effects of stressful life events. The concept of caring for self has long being promoted, by scholars, as an essential need of nurses to care for themselves, not so they can keep on giving to others but because each nurse is worthy of being cared for by self. In the era of the pandemic in which stressful work environment, social distancing, and self-isolation make it difficult to maintain interconnectedness and build relationships, despair can occur. Spiritual practices are examples of the resources that can be used effectively in times of stress to reduce the negativity that life stressors create in individuals.

Clarifying a vision for health literacy: a holistic school-based community approach.

Health literacy has come to the forefront as an emerging health issue. Processes are needed to incorporate health literacy across community-wide settings. The purpose of this article is to describe the process used to assist community partners in a school health program in clarifying their vision of health literacy from which a more holistic approach to the care of school-aged children and the community was co-created.

Narratives of older persons' frailty and physical activity in relation to environmental landscapes and time.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to explore the influence of the environmental landscape on the physical activity of older persons experiencing frailty. BACKGROUND: This manuscript describes the second phase of an unpublished larger study in the northern province of Lampang, Thailand. Phase One revealed that 14% of 1,788 older persons surveyed were found to have experienced frailty according to Fried's frailty phenotypes, and low physical activity was associated with frailty. In the light of frailty, how older persons experience physical activity in their day-to-day living environments warrants in-depth exploration. DESIGN: This was a qualitative study guided by narrative inquiry. METHODS: In-depth interviews and observations were conducted with 13 older persons living with frailty. The method of analysis was thematic and performance analysis. RESULTS: Two broad themes relating to the environmental landscapes were as follows: (a) limiting environmental landscapes and (b) engaging environmental landscapes. These landscapes, which change across time, refer to physical and social spaces, and beliefs of older persons and their family that have either positive or negative impacts on physical activity of frail older persons. CONCLUSION: Complex interactions between physical and social spaces and beliefs of older persons and family influence the physical activity behaviours of older persons living with frailty. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: This study warrants education and policy aiming at creating optimal environmental landscapes to promote physical activity in frail older persons.

Understanding homelessness using a simulated nursing experience.

Students have an opportunity to understand the full experience of being homeless using simulated community nursing situations with a high-fidelity simulator. The Community Nursing Practice Model provides a context for using this innovative teaching strategy to enable students to respond holistically to the needs of the homeless.

Town & Gown.

Innovative approaches for building "town and gown" relationships between practicing school nurses, community partners, and universities/colleges are presented through exemplars relating to research, education, policy, and practice. The exemplars demonstrate the critical factors of successful partnerships as validated by their outcomes.

On Virtual Presence.

Advances in health care and communication technology have expanded nursing practice to nontraditional environments that preclude the physical presence of the nurse for a caring encounter. An increasing number of nurses are creating and maintaining nurse-patient relationships and practicing in a diverse range of specialties in virtual/distance environments. Can nursing presence as a caring modality be "real" in a virtual/distance environment? A new ontology of nursing presence is offered that transcends people, place, space, and time.

Delegation guided by school nursing values: comprehensive knowledge, trust, and empowerment.

As health care institutions in the United States respond to shrinking budgets and nursing shortages by increasing the use of unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP), school nursing practice is changing from providing direct care to supervising activities delegated to UAP. Therefore, delegation is a critical area of concern for school nurses. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore values guiding the delegation of health care tasks to UAP in school settings from the perspective of the school nurse. An inquiry focus group was conducted with 64 Florida school nurses. Values guiding delegation were comprehensive knowledge, trust, and empowerment. These values provided a framework for guiding the delegation process.

The usefulness of the community nursing practice model in grounding practice and research: narratives from the United States and Africa.

A community nursing practice (CNP) model is presented as the synthesis of a decade of experience of caring for persons and communities. Values form the basis of the model and provide the grounding for practice. Transcendent values of respect, caring, and wholeness are explicated in the actualizing values of primary health care: access, essentiality, empowerment, intersectoral collaboration, and community participation. Usefulness of the CNPM in providing a framework for community nursing practice at school-based community wellness centers in both the United States and Africa is described. Narratives of practice and research presented in the unique voice of three faculty members illuminate the model's values and paradigmatic view of person, nursing, community, and environment. These narratives provide insight into how the CNPM has served as a heuristic in the design of creative responses to calls for nursing in community nursing practice, education, and research.

Development of a school nursing research agenda in Florida: a Delphi study.

Research is important to the image, visibility, and viability of school nursing. Each state school nursing association should evaluate member commitment to school nursing research based on their unique set of financial, educational, and organizational resources. A 3-round Delphi study was conducted in which Florida school nurses identified research priorities. The 10 priority research topics were (a) obesity/nutrition, (b) role of the school nurse, (c) legal/ethical issues, (d) emergencies, (e) health education, (f) absenteeism/attendance, (g) diabetes and insulin, (h) injuries, (i) health services, and (j) asthma. These topics form the state research agenda and will be used to guide the development of multisite school nursing studies.