Contemp Nurse
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Biography Historical Article
Lights in the shadows: Florence Nightingale and others who made their mark.
Florence Nightingale, the 'lady with the lamp' became the image of 'heroic womanhood' (Bostridge 2004) when she returned from the Crimean War an iconic figure and ever since she has remained fated to wear the mantel of nursings' leading light. But she wasn't the only woman who made their mark or who undertook to risk their live caring for the sick and injured, wounded and dying in the Crimea. ⋯ These women, nuns, ordinary nurses, lady volunteers and others, working in Nightingale's shadow, contributed much to the comforts of the wounded and dying and this article seeks to illuminate their presence and contribution. It also highlights other aspects of Nightingale's work and in doing so, allows us to look into the shadows and shed more light on the others who were also there.
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Mixed methods research is becoming increasingly popular in the health and social science disciplines. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the varieties of mixed methods designs. We begin by situating mixed methods research in the context of a paradigmatic framework which assists a researcher in making decisions concerning the design of their study. Although the most commonly used mixed methods designs are underpinned by positivist/postpositivist assumptions, the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods can be used within any research paradigm.
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The Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration is an established instrument to measure the perceived work relationship between physicians and nurses. The survey addresses areas of autonomy and decision making, interprofessional education and relations, psychosocial care, teamwork, and shared responsibility. The aim of this prelimiary study was to adapt the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration for use in Turkey and test its psychometric properties and utility in clinical and research practice. ⋯ The overall findings of this study indicate that the Turkish version of the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration is a psychometrically sound tool with satisfactory measurement characteristics including construct validity and internal consistency reliability. This instrument may be useful in assessing the effectiveness of educational programs designed to enhance collaboration between physicians and nurses, whether these programs are aimed at residents and graduate nursing students or practicing physicians and nurses.
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The Yapunyah Project is an initiative of the Faculty of Health at Queensland University of Technology. It was instigated to further improve the development of cultural competence in health graduates with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. The project was informed by the cultural competence in healthcare delivery models of Campinha-Bacote (1998a) and Cross, Bazron, Dennis and Isaacs (1989) and by the cultural safety reforms to nursing curricula in New Zealand. ⋯ The experience has been a challenging and positive one, and the reforms have been supported by a sustainable framework. This paper outlines how one university faculty is endeavouring to educationally prepare nursing students to practice with evidence-based transcultural nursing knowledge based on culture care values, beliefs, and traditional lifeways of Indigenous people of Australia. As such, the project aims to contribute to the improvement and promotion of the health and well-being of Indigenous Australians in culturally and ethnohistorically meaningful ways.
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Although the incidence of cancer in Indigenous peoples is similar to its incidence in the overall Australian population, Indigenous peoples are less likely to access early detection and medical interventions resulting in higher mortality and morbidity rates. To explore and address this discrepancy, the National Health and Medical Research Council funded a research study to examine Indigenous peoples' views of cancer and cancer treatments with an end goal of developing an innovative model of Indigenous Palliative Care. Seventy-two participants were interviewed from four geographical areas within the Northern Territory (Australia) including patients, caregivers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous health care workers, and interpreters. ⋯ There is no Indigenous word for cancer and the Western biomedical language that semantically constructs the notion of cancer is not widely understood. Additionally, for many Indigenous people, the aetiology of cancer is embedded in beliefs about the spiritual world of curses and payback from perceived misdeeds. The paper advocates for cross-cultural education initiatives, stressing the importance of a two way education strategy incorporating a process whereby medical and nursing personnel would improve their understanding of Indigenous peoples' view of cancer and Indigenous peoples would learn more about prevention and treatment of cancer from a biomedical perspective.