Stance and strategy: post-structural perspective and post-colonial engagement to develop nursing knowledge.

How should nursing knowledge advance? This exploration contextualizes its evolution past and present. In addressing how it evolved in the past, a probable historical evolution of its development draws on the perspectives of Frank & Gills's World System Theory, Kuhn's treatise on Scientific Revolutions, and Foucault's notions of Discontinuities in scientific knowledge development. By describing plausible scenarios of how nursing knowledge evolved, I create a case for why nursing knowledge developers should adopt a post-structural stance in prioritizing their research agenda(s). Further, by adopting a post-structural stance, I create a case on how nurses can advance their disciplinary knowledge using an engaging post-colonial strategy. Given an interrupted history caused by influence(s) constraining nursing's knowledge development by power structures external, and internal, to nursing, knowledge development can evolve in the future by drawing on post-structural interpretation, and post-colonial strategy. The post-structural writings of Deleuze & Guattari's understanding of 'Nomadology' as a subtle means to resist being constrained by existing knowledge development structures, might be a useful stance to understanding the urgency of why nursing knowledge should advance addressing the structural influences on its development. Furthermore, Bhabha's post-colonial elucidation of 'Hybridity' as an equally discreet means to change the culture of those constraining structures is an appropriate strategy to enact how nursing knowledge developers can engage with existing power structures, and simultaneously influence that engagement. Taken together, 'post-structural stance' and 'post-colonial strategy' can refocus nursing scholarship to learn from its past, in order to develop relevant disciplinary knowledge in its future.

Voices of internationally educated nurses: policy recommendations for credentialing.

BACKGROUND: The authors advance general policy recommendations for credentialing Internationally Educated Nurses (IENs) who migrate to practice nursing in developed, high-income countries. While examples are drawn primarily from a qualitative study exploring IEN experiences in Canada, the suggestions presented have broader application to any nursing, or midwifery, internationally educated professionals wanting, or needing, to practice outside their home country of education. Examples of credential processing are drawn from Australia, the European Union, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. METHODS: This study was guided by a biographical narrative (qualitative) research methodology. A convenience sample of 12 IENs volunteered to participate. RESULTS: The IENs offered recommendations based on their personal experiences, all of which have policy implications to make transparent, standardize and harmonize the credentialing processes both prior to, and upon arrival in their destination country. Suggestions are offered to make relevant the content of IEN integration programmes. CONCLUSIONS: The authors also suggested that national immigration agencies and nursing regulatory bodies could better coordinate their activities when processing potential IEN migrant applications.

Global and planetary health: teaching as if the future matters.

If nursing, along with other health professions, is to be able to critique national and international health policy and be equipped to address the global and planetary dimensions of health, the conceptual horizons of our educational and research enterprises will need to be expanded. Not only are nursing curricula needed that address such concepts as "health for all" and "environmental sustainability," but new pedagogies are required that engage students deeply and call them to socially and globally responsible ways-of-being. This article describes teaching and learning in a course that situates health in a global and environmental context and calls forth new personal and professional meanings.