An international panel perspective: Exploring nursing scholarship in academia.

BACKGROUND: Boyer's framework of scholarship, the basis of many academic models for faculty promotion, is comprised of the components of discovery, teaching, integration, application, and engagement. Yet, the scholarship component of application (containing goal-based clinical practice) is undervalued by many academic models. PURPOSE: This study explores the nursing activities currently qualifying as scholarship in several international academic models. METHODS: Using the Delphi approach, an international nine-member panel from seven countries participated in a six-question, structured brainstorming session to explore the nursing activities qualifying as scholarship by academic models. Follow-up sessions were attended by six panel members. RESULTS: Panel members reported that the nursing activities, which most often were recognized as scholarship, fit the scholarship components of discovery, teaching and integration but few fit the components of application or engagement. Although this project originally focused on clinical practice, far more recommendations for an academic model targeted the scholarship component of engagement. CONCLUSION: Academic models' lack of appreciation for the scholarship components of application (goal-based clinical practice) and engagement (partnering with community groups) discourages faculty from participating in these activities. Yet, these nursing activities demonstrate scholarship and are essential for the continued development of the nursing profession and discipline.

Integrating Compassion and Theoretical Premises of Caring Science into Undergraduate Health Professions Education.

Compassion and caring are critical foundational concepts for the education of health professions students. Yet many curricula emphasize skill-based learning and test-taking preparation, which often limits the opportunities for students to practice compassionately caring for themselves and others. In 2019, an elective wellness course was introduced into a School of Nursing and Health Professions curriculum to provide students with the knowledge, understanding, and practice of self-compassion and caring as the foundation for holistically caring for others. The goal of the course is to use ethics, values, and ontological competencies of self-compassion and Caritas literacy to awaken students to their being, not just doing, and how it evolves throughout their professional careers. Narrative feedback from students demonstrated a deeper understanding of the necessity for compassion and caring for self to provide compassionate care to others.

Stories of the Heart: Illness Narratives of Veterans Living With Heart Failure.

Background: Illness narratives for veterans living with heart failure (HF) have been largely unexplored, yet HF is a significant and impactful illness affecting the lives of many veterans. Methods: This study used narrative inquiry to explore the domains of psychosocial adjustments using the model of adjustment to illness, including self-schema, world schema, and meaning. Results: Five illness narratives of veterans living with HF were cocreated and explored domains which were found across all the narratives explored in this study. Emergent themes included: uniqueness of the veteran experience and the social, historical, and cultural context of narrator and researcher. Conclusions: Veterans living with HF are a unique population who experience changes in their self-schema, world schema, and meaning through their illness experience. These findings have important implications for interdisciplinary health care research and clinical practice, providing important insight into how people live with chronic illness.

The value of intentional self-care practices: The effects of mindfulness on improving job satisfaction, teamwork, and workplace environments.

BACKGROUND: Burnout rates among nurses have detrimental impact on job satisfaction, teamwork, and patient care. This costs millions of dollars in the healthcare system and challenges nurse leaders to address in order to keep up with the healthcare demands. Furthermore, burnout is especially relevant in our current healthcare climate, as frontline nurses have increased workload and multiple psychosocial stressors during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic (Sultana, Sharma, Hossain, Bhattacharya, & Purohit, 2019). Literature also suggests that mindful self-care practices need to be reinforced in order to impact burnout long term (Chamorro-Premuzic & Lusk, 2017). Project7 Mindfulness Pledge© is an accessible and voluntary mindfulness tool that nurses can utilize in their individual practice to reduce burnout and does not require significant time commitment. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of intentional self-care practices on nurse burnout and workplace environment by measuring job satisfaction and teamwork among nurses. METHODS: Comparisons between inpatient units on data from the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) with the Practice Environment Scale (PES), specifically on job enjoyment and teamwork, were done utilizing ANOVA. RESULTS: Results show that nurses in an inpatient unit that implemented Project7 has significantly higher job satisfaction as compared to units that did not implement Project7. CONCLUSIONS: This suggests that this tool provides an effective and accessible mindfulness framework managers and directors can utilize to improve job satisfaction, teamwork, and thereby reduce burnout to create healthier work environments.

Moving from practice to praxis: A qualitative descriptive study revealing the value of Project7 Mindfulness Pledge©.

AIM: To examine the experiences of nurses and nursing assistants who participated in a mindfulness project. BACKGROUND: Increased demands and fewer resources have become the norm in most health care settings. As a result, health care professionals face exceptional stress in their work environments and are vulnerable to burnout and compassion fatigue. Even more distressing, many new nurses are leaving their jobs within the first two years. METHODS: Qualitative interviews were conducted with nine participants to discover their experience with the project. RESULTS: The major theme, a process of moving from practice to praxis, is brought forth through in-depth descriptive analysis of nine individual interviews. The process occurred through three themes: fostering self-awareness and compassion; fostering other-awareness and compassion; and compelling transformation in the unit culture. CONCLUSIONS: This study develops an evidence base for incorporating and building mindfulness into health care environments at a time when there is a tremendous need for highly functioning practitioners. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nurse leaders are encouraged to examine how they can support their staff in moving from practice to praxis as a part of improving professional well-being, retention, quality and safety in health care.

Reducing the Second Victim Phenomenon: Healing Our Healers With Caritas Coaching.

The second victim phenomenon is one in which nurses and other health care providers use dysfunctional mechanisms, such as anger, projection of blame, or drugs and/or alcohol, to cope with serious mistakes in the absence of a healthier means for healing. The main purpose of this article is to provide evidence and practices that support the need for caring organizational support systems following serious adverse clinical events. Recommendations are provided on key elements of programs to prevent the prevalence, symptoms, and impact of the second victim phenomenon on our health care professionals, our patients, and our health care system.

A Meeting of Hearts and Minds: A Critical Reflection on Building, Enhancing, and Sustaining Global Partnerships in Nursing Education.

AIM: The aim of the study was to engage in a critical reflective dialogue through a purposeful and strategic process to build, enhance, and sustain global partnerships. BACKGROUND: Expanding global health through partnerships necessitates a critical dialogue on shared values and understandings. Appreciating philosophical orientations, ethical perspectives, and broadening what counts as evidence serves to further inform scholarship and practice partnerships. METHOD: We engaged in a critical reflective dialogue by exploring our experiences through a purposeful and strategic process where we described, examined, and articulated the learning that informs our partnership. RESULTS: By listening to each other's stories, reflecting individually, and dialoguing together, we have shared and compared experiences that gave us more insight into how to build, enhance, and sustain our partnership. CONCLUSION: Continuously examining issues and discussions around partnerships through a critical reflective process supports the development of shared values and meaning, strengthens connections, and leads to new knowledge for sustaining global health partnerships.

A Nursing Dashboard to Communicate the Evaluation of Program Outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Schools of nursing pursue accreditation to convey the quality of their program. Communication of their process for continuous quality improvement and ability to produce competent nurse graduates are common program goals. PURPOSE: This article describes the implementation of a nursing dashboard as an innovative approach to examine and communicate program outcomes. METHODS: A comprehensive evaluation document in the form of a dashboard was created in a user-friendly format to monitor and convey outcomes to stakeholders. This visual evaluation document was crafted in congruence with a utilization-oriented evaluation model incorporating accreditation standards. RESULTS: Stakeholders, including alumni, faculty, and students, conveyed satisfaction with the dashboard graphic of program evaluation data. Participant responses were greater than 4.3/5.0 on a Likert scale, indicating satisfaction with the dashboard communication of outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: The nursing dashboard provides an innovative approach to the review of program outcomes with meaningful data for strategic planning and program decisions.

Quantum Caring Leadership: Integrating Quantum Leadership With Caring Science.

The authors of this article integrate two historically parallel yet disparate fields of nursing, caring science theory and nursing quantum leadership science. Through a nursing, discipline-specific unitary paradigm lens, intersecting principles of caring science and quantum leadership science are uncovered. The result is a model for unitary, discipline-specific, nursing healthcare leadership: Quantum Caring Healthcare Leadership. Ontological congruence is uncovered among the philosophical-ethical-theoretical principles of caring science and the unifying disciplinary structural concepts from quantum leadership. The result is a model for discipline-specific, healthcare leadership. This convergence is potentially theory-generating for both unitary science and healthcare leadership. In this model, both quantum leadership and caring science are transformed and metamorphosed into a new unitary, discipline-specific entity to guide further advancement of knowledge, theory, and discipline-specific healthcare leadership and practice.

Technology, Educator Intention, and Relationships in Virtual Learning Spaces: A Qualitative Metasynthesis.

BACKGROUND: A main concern that remains with the continued growth of online nursing education programs is the way educator and student relationships can be affected by new technologies. This interpretive study aims to gain an understanding of how technology influences the development of interpersonal relationships between the student and faculty in a virtual learning environment. METHOD: Using an established structured approach to qualitative metasynthesis, a search was conducted using PubMed, EBSCO, CINAHL, Medline, ProQuest, Ovid Nursing databases, and Google Scholar, focused on caring and relational aspects of online nursing education. RESULTS: Technology alters communication, thereby positioning the intentionality of the educator at the heart of interpersonal relationship development in virtual learning spaces. CONCLUSION: This interpretive synthesis of prior qualitative research supports the development of a framework for online nursing courses, the need for continuing education of nursing faculty, the value of caring intentions, and enhancement of the educator's technological proficiency. [J Nurs Educ. 2018;57(4):197-202.].

Temporal Immediacy: A Two-System Theory of Mind for Understanding and Changing Health Behaviors.

BACKGROUND: Health promotion and chronic disease management both require behavior change, but people find it hard to change behavior despite having good intentions. The problem arises because patients' narratives about experiences and intentions are filtered through memory and language. These narratives inaccurately reflect intuitive decision-making or actual behaviors. OBJECTIVES: We propose a principle-temporal immediacy-as a moderator variable that explains which of two mental systems (narrative or intuitive) will be activated in any given situation. We reviewed multiple scientific areas to test temporal immediacy as an explanation for findings. METHODS: In an iterative process, we used evidence from philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral economics, symptom science, and ecological momentary assessment to develop our theoretical perspective. These perspectives each suggest two cognitive systems that differ in their level of temporal immediacy: an intuitive system that produces behavior in response to everyday states and a narrative system that interprets and explains these experiences after the fact. FINDINGS: Writers from Plato onward describe two competing influences on behavior-often with moral overtones. People tend to identify with the language-based narrative system and blame unhelpful results on the less accessible intuitive system, but neither is completely rational, and the intuitive system has strengths based on speed and serial processing. The systems differ based on temporal immediacy-the description of an experience as either "now" or "usually"-with the intuitive system generating behaviors automatically in real time and the narrative system producing beliefs about the past or future. DISCUSSION: The principle of temporal immediacy is a tool to integrate nursing science with other disciplinary traditions and to improve research and practice. Interventions should build on each system's strengths, rather than treating the intuitive system as a barrier for the narrative system to overcome. Nursing researchers need to study the roles and effects of both systems.

Reflective practices: meaningful recognition for healthy work environments.

Nurses' decisions about their intent to remain in the workforce are based on various factors. A healthy work environment in which work done well is recognised and appreciated contributes to nurses' satisfaction and better patient outcomes. This article examines the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses framework for a healthy work environment, focusing on standards for meaningful recognition. Reflective practice, which provides a self-analytical approach to appreciate and value one's work, is viewed as self-recognition. Neither boastful nor arrogant, reflective self-recognition is part of progression to professional maturity. It involves examining events at work continuously and systematically to learn, appreciate and move to higher levels of contribution in the workplace.

Becoming a nurse faculty leader: Taking risks by being willing to fail.

BACKGROUND: Higher education is undergoing rapid transformation requiring nurse faculty leaders to engage in risk taking. Consequently, what is known about the experience of taking risks? How do leaders decide what constitutes a risk worth taking? How do leaders who take risks tolerate failure? The purpose of this study was to explicate the leadership practices of risk taking in nurse faculty leaders. METHOD: Interpretive phenomenology was used to explore the experience of risk taking among 15 self-identified nurse faculty leaders. Unstructured audio recorded interviews were conducted in which participants described their experiences of taking risks. Transcribed interviews were analyzed by a research team to uncover themes in the narrative data. RESULTS: A theme, willingness to fail, and three subthemes, enacting a culture of experimentation, working hard for success, and learning from failure are reported. CONCLUSION: This study provides practical know-how and an evidence-base to support nurse academic leaders in the practice of risk taking during these challenging times in higher education.

The nurse's lived experience of becoming an interprofessional leader.

In the current complex health care environment, nurses in all practice settings are called on to be leaders in advocating for a healthier future. Health care reform, the rise of the evidence-based practice movement, and the proliferation of new educational options are opening opportunities as never before for nurses to expand their leadership capacity to an interprofessional level. This interpretive phenomenological study conducted with eight nurse participants describes their experience of becoming an interprofessional leader. A team of three nurse researchers interpreted the texts individually and collectively. Interview texts were analyzed hermeneutically to uncover the common shared experience of moving toward common ground with interprofessional leadership as a process, one that not only took time, but also called for self-reflection, deliberate actions, and a new mind-set. This study develops the evidence base for leadership preparation at a time when there is a strong need for interprofessional leaders and educators in health care.

Becoming a nurse faculty leader: taking risks by doing the right thing.

Risk taking is a key aspect of academic leadership essential to meeting the challenges and opportunities in higher education. What are the practices of risk taking in nurse faculty leaders? This interpretive phenomenological study examines the experience and meaning of risk taking among nurse leaders. The theme of doing the right thing is brought forth through in-depth hermeneutic analysis of 14 individual interviews and two focus group narratives. The practice of doing the right thing is propelled and captured by leaders through a sense professional responsibility, visioning the future, and being true to self and follow one's core values. This study develops an evidence base for incorporating ways of doing the right thing in leadership development activities at a time when there is tremendous need for highly effective leaders in academic settings. Examining the practices of doing the right thing as a part of leadership development lays a foundation for building the next generation of nursing leaders prepared to navigate the ever-changing and complex academic and health care environments.

Becoming a nurse faculty leader: doing your homework to minimize risk taking.

Risk taking is an important aspect of academic leadership; yet, how does taking risks shape leadership development, and what are the practices of risk taking in nurse faculty leaders? This interpretative phenomenological study examines the meaning and experience of risk taking among formal and informal nurse faculty leaders. The theme of doing your homework is generated through in-depth hermeneutic analysis of 14 interview texts and 2 focus group narratives. The practice of doing one's homework is captured in weighing costs and benefits, learning the context, and cultivating relationships. This study develops an evidence base for incorporating ways of doing one's homework into leadership development activities at a time when there is a tremendous need for nurse leaders in academic settings. Examining the practices of doing one's homework to minimize risk as a part of leadership development provides a foundation for cultivating nurse leaders who, in turn, are able to support and build leadership capacity in others.