Nurse administrators as the cause of moral distress among nurse educators: A qualitative research study.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the causes of moral distress among nurse educators. BACKGROUND: Educational administration factors can cause moral distress among nursing faculty members. Despite this, limited attention has been paid to addressing these factors. Highlighting and addressing these factors is now an essential element of organizational success. METHODS: A descriptive phenomenological design was used to explore nursing faculty members' lived experiences of nursing faculty members of moral distress. Qualitative data were collected from 10 faculty members using a semi-structured interview framework. RESULTS: Five themes emerged a) administrative support deficit, b) administrator-faculty member rapport, c) sense of powerlessness, d) marginalization in the decision-making process, and E) being forced to work in opposition to the nursing profession value system. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides common themes as they pertain to causes of moral distress in academic settings. Nurse administrators can play a vital role in preventing moral distress by providing management that demonstrates human caring values and advocates for nursing faculty. Preventing moral distress in academic settings is essential to reinforce and exemplify an ideal learning environment for nursing educators and nursing students.

Spirituality as a core concept in the theoretical literature of nursing: A comparative overview between Watson & Lovering's perspectives.

Nurse theorists have addressed the primacy of the phenomenon of caring, aiming at providing a framework that captures the complex nature of caring. Several theorists emphasized the mechanical facet of care while others emphasized the holistic aspect of care. Spirituality as a central concept in caring theories was targeted in this manuscript; as it a fundamental aspect of holistic care. Watson's Human Caring Science Theory and Lovering's Crescent of Care Nursing Model represent two distinctive approaches to caring in the dimension of spirituality. A compare/contrast approach is used to depict the similarities and differences between both works, focusing on spirituality as a common concept. The outcome of the comparison showed that spirituality is a multidimensional metaphysical concept that both theorists had identified as an indispensable core aspect of holistic nursing and is context-bound in terms of its dimensions, applications, and meaningfulness.

Simulating care: technology-mediated learning in twenty-first century nursing education.

PROBLEM: The increased reliance on simulation classrooms has proven successful in learning skills. Questions persist concerning the ability of technology-driven robotic devices to form and cultivate caring behaviors, or sufficiently develop interactive nurse-client communication necessary in the context of nursing. METHODS: This article examines the disconnects created by use of simulation technology in nursing education, raising the question: "Can learning of caring-as-being, be facilitated in simulation classrooms?" FINDINGS: We propose that unless time is spent with human beings in the earliest stages of nursing education, transpersonal caring relationships do not have space to develop. Learning, crafting, and maturation of caring behaviors threatens to become a serendipitous event or is no longer perceived as an essential characteristic of nursing. CONCLUSIONS: Technology does not negate caring-the isolation it fosters makes transpersonal caring all the more important. We are called to create a new paradigm for nursing education that merges Nightingale's vision with technology's promise.

Protecting the Vulnerable: The Importance of Effective Parental Tobacco-Dependence Treatment During Prenatal and Newborn Care.

Tobacco use among pregnant women, as well as second- and third-hand smoke exposure of their infants, translates into the startling fact that more than one third of American children live with at least one parent who smokes cigarettes daily. Maternal smoking or second-hand smoke exposure during pregnancy is deleterious to the mother's health and contributes to prematurity, low birth-weight infants, and increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and recurrent wheezing during the first year of life. Pregnant women who stop tobacco use during pregnancy are at high risk for postpartum relapse frequently associated with a partner who smokes tobacco, stress, poverty, and lack of social and medical support to remain tobacco free. Enhanced efforts to identify and support pregnant women who smoke, and to implement strategies to prevent exposure of their fetus and newborn to the hazards of tobacco-smoke exposure, are paramount in our public health efforts to eliminate health disparities in the United States. We discuss the critical elements of programs to assist mothers to stop smoking during pregnancy and toward family efforts to maintain a smoke-free environment for their infant. Postpartum interventions, whether in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), newborn nursery, or postnatal care setting, can provide assistance that women need to remain smoke free, to educate spouses or significant others and their families, and to aide in establishing goals of maintaining a tobacco smoke-free home and car. Physicians and other perinatal healthcare providers have a duty to identify pregnant women who smoke for "meaningful use" in the electronic medical record, and to provide advice and assistance in evidence-based smoking interventions in obstetrical care settings. Pediatricians, neonatologists, and others providing postpartum, "normal" nursery or NICU care have an opportunity to protect infants and young children from second- and third-hand smoke exposure by assisting their parents and family members in maintaining a tobacco-free environment to improve the health of infants, toddlers, and young children.