Week 6 Discussion NUR Reflect on 19th
Posted: February 15th, 2023
Week 6 Discussion NUR
Reflect on 19th and 20th-century nurses and events discussed this week. Which nurse or event from that time period will best guide your current professional nursing practice? Why?
Week 7 Discussion
Select one person or event in 21st-century nursing that had the greatest impact on evidence in professional nursing practice. Explain your choice and the impact on healthcare.
Week 8 Discussion
What lessons from history have we learned as a profession that will take us into the next century? What can we do to help this happen? What should we avoid?
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For the first question about 19th and 20th century nurses, Florence Nightingale would be the nurse who best guides my current practice. Her work establishing sanitary conditions and evidence-based practices during the Crimean War showed the impact nursing can have on positive health outcomes. Her emphasis on data collection and environmental factors influencing health revolutionized the field. Nightingale paved the way for nursing to become a respected profession focused on scientific principles and making a real difference in people’s lives. Her legacy continues to shape how I approach patients and their holistic needs.
For the second question, I believe the nurse who had the greatest 21st century impact on evidence-based practice is Dr. Dorrie Fontaine. As the former President of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, she has been a champion for establishing nursing-sensitive indicators and performance measures that demonstrate the value of nursing interventions. Through her work developing and implementing structures and processes for systematic data collection, Dr. Fontaine has elevated the standard of evidence that supports our decisions and practice. She helped move nursing from an anecdotal profession to one backed by measurable outcomes. Her contributions ensured nursing maintains its role as a science and that we continuously improve our ability to provide the highest quality, most effective care.
Finally, for the third question, one lesson of history we must carry into the future is the importance of collaboration. As Nightingale showed, nursing is most effective when we work interprofessionally to address all factors impacting health. To take the profession forward, we must avoid silos and instead embrace partnerships across disciplines, with patients and their support systems, with researchers, and with policymakers. Open communication and incorporating diverse perspectives will be key to solving increasingly complex problems. We must also stay dedicated to core nursing values like compassion even as technology advances. If we draw on history’s collaborators while keeping sight of our caring foundations, nursing will continue evolving in ways that best serve individuals and populations.