Nurses Rock

The skinny on Nurse’s Week and The Florence Nightingale Oath…

Where did it all start?

“The Florence Nightingale Oath” is a modified “Hippocratic Oath” and was composed in 1893 as a token of esteem for the founder of modern nursing.

“I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully.I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.”

 The proposals for National School Nurse Day begun in the early 50’s and officially as of 2003 it is celebrated on the Wednesday within National Nurses Week culminating on May 12th, Florence Nightingale’s birthday.

What hierarchy of needs model is most valid?

Abraham Maslow created the original five level Hierarchy of Needs model, and for many this remains entirely adequate for its purpose. The seven and eight level 'hierarchy of needs' models are later adaptations by others, based on Maslow's work. Arguably, the original five-level model includes the later additional sixth, seventh and eighth ('Cognitive', 'Aesthetic', and 'Transcendence') levels within the original 'Self-Actualization' level 5, since each one of the 'new' motivators concerns an area of self-development and self-fulfilment that is rooted in self-actualization 'growth', and is distinctly different to any of the previous 1-4 level 'deficiency' motivators. For many people, self-actualizing commonly involves each and every one of the newly added drivers. As such, the original five-level Hierarchy of Needs model remains a definitive classical representation of human motivation; and the later adaptations perhaps serve best to illustrate aspects of self-actualization.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs model in 1940-50s USA, and the Hierarchy of Needs theory remains valid today for understanding human motivation, management training, and personal development.
Indeed, Maslow's ideas surrounding the Hierarchy of Needs concerning the responsibility of employers to provide a workplace environment that encourages and enables employees to fulfil their own unique potential (self-actualization) are today more relevant than ever. Abraham Maslow's book Motivation and Personality, published in 1954 (second edition 1970) introduced the Hierarchy of Needs, and Maslow extended his ideas in other work, notably his later book Toward A Psychology Of Being, a significant and relevant commentary, which has been revised in recent times by Richard Lowry, who is in his own right a leading academic in the field of motivational psychology.

Each of us is motivated by needs. Our most basic needs are inborn, having evolved over tens of thousands of years. Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs helps to explain how these needs motivate us all.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs states that we must satisfy each need in turn, starting with the first, which deals with the most obvious needs for survival itself.

Only when the lower order needs of physical and emotional well-being are satisfied are we concerned with the higher order needs of influence and personal development.

Conversely, if the things that satisfy our lower order needs are swept away, we are no longer concerned about the maintenance of our higher order needs.

Maslow's original Hierarchy of Needs model was developed between 1943-1954, and first widely published in Motivation and Personality in 1954. At this time the Hierarchy of Needs model comprised five needs. This original version remains for most people the definitive Hierarchy of Needs.

 Maslow's hierarchy of needs

1. Biological and Physiological needs - air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.

2. Safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, etc.

3. Belongingness and Love needs - work group, family, affection, relationships, etc.

4. Esteem needs - self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility, etc.

5. Cognitive needs - knowledge, meaning, etc.

6. Aesthetic needs - appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.

7. Self-Actualization needs - realising personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

8. Transcendence needs - helping others to achieve self actualization

The Nursing Process

The common thread uniting different types of nurses who work in varied areas is the nursing process—the essential core of practice for the registered nurse to deliver holistic, patient-focused care.

·                Assessment
An RN uses a systematic, dynamic way to collect and analyze data about a client, the first step in delivering nursing care. Assessment includes not only physiological data, but also psychological, sociocultural, spiritual, economic, and life-style factors as well. For example, a nurse’s assessment of a hospitalized patient in pain includes not only the physical causes and manifestations of pain, but the patient’s response—an inability to get out of bed, refusal to eat, withdrawal from family members, anger directed at hospital staff, fear, or request for more pain mediation.

·                Diagnosis
The nursing diagnosis is the nurse’s clinical judgment about the client’s response to actual or potential health conditions or needs. The diagnosis reflects not only that the patient is in pain, but that the pain has caused other problems such as anxiety, poor nutrition, and conflict within the family, or has the potential to cause complications—for example, respiratory infection is a potential hazard to an immobilized patient. The diagnosis is the basis for the nurse’s care plan.

·                Outcomes / Planning

Based on the assessment and diagnosis, the nurse sets measurable and achievable short- and long-range goals for this patient that might include moving from bed to chair at least three times per day; maintaining adequate nutrition by eating smaller, more frequent meals; resolving conflict through counseling, or managing pain through adequate medication. Assessment data, diagnosis, and goals are written in the patient’s care plan so that nurses as well as other health professionals caring for the patient have access to it.

·                Implementation
Nursing care is implemented according to the care plan, so continuity of care for the patient during hospitalization and in preparation for discharge needs to be assured. Care is documented in the patient’s record.

·                Evaluation
Both the patient’s status and the effectiveness of the nursing care must be continuously evaluated, and the care plan modified as needed.

Internacional Nurses Day

International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world every May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) has celebrated this day since 1965. In 1953 Dorothy Sutherland, an official with the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, had proposed that President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaim a "Nurses Day," but he did not approve it.

In January 1974, the decision was made to celebrate the day on 12 May as it is the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, who is widely considered the founder of modern nursing. Each year, ICN prepares and distributes the International Nurses' Day Kit. The kit contains educational and public information materials, for use by nurses everywhere.

In 1999 the British public sector union UNISON voted to ask the ICN to transfer this day to another date, saying Nightingale did not represent modern nursing.

As of 1998, 8 May was designated as annual National Student Nurses Day. As of 2003, the Wednesday within National Nurses Week, between 6 and 12 May, is National School Nurse Day.
Every year ICN have a new theme for International Nurses Day, this are some of this themes since 2000:

- 2000: Always there for you
- 2001: Nurses, Always There for You: United Against Violenc
- 2002: Nurses, Always There for You: Caring for Familie
- 2003: Nurses: Fighting AIDS stigma, working for all
- 2004: Nurses: Working with the Poor; Against Poverty
- 2005: Nurses for Patients Safety: Targeting counterfeit medicines and substandard medication
- 2006: Safe staffing saves lives
- 2007: Positive practice environments: Quality workplaces = quality patient care
- 2008: Delivering Quality, Serving Communities: Nurses Leading Primary Health Care
- 2009: Delivering Quality, Serving Communities: Nurses Leading Care Innovations
- 2010: Delivering Quality, Serving Communities: Nurses Leading Chronic Care
- 2011: Closing The Gap: Increasing Access and Equity
- 2012: Closing The Gap: From Evidence to Action.

What is the importance of Florence Nightingale?

Florence Nightingale is considered the founder of modern nursing. The myth of the nurse as a guardian angel to the patient's bedside, starring Florence, will typically be a social construction of English romanticism, in full Victorian.

Let us remember, however, some of the problems that emerged to hospital nursing ashore in Britain until the mid-19th century, dominated by matrons and nurses, the sisters of charity:

• Sporadic work, disqualified, socially undervalued and underpaid;
• Crude application of medical care;
• The absence of specificity of functional and technical autonomy;
• Highly painful working conditions in hospitals and in worhouses;
• Difficulties in the recruitment of staff;
• Lack of training structures, etc.

In addition to technically disqualified, matrons and nurses had often behaved morally wrong. The registration books of most British hospitals of the era report of impressive frequency of cases of nurses who were dismissed by alcoholism, insolence, lack of discipline, absenteeism, theft or extortion practiced in patient person.

Nightingale attacked these problems by creating a system based on training, workout, dedication, in iron discipline and strong hierarchical stratification, according to a mixed model, conventual and military.

Who is Florence Nightingale?

Florence Nightingale (Florence, May 12, 1820 – August 13, 1910) was a British nurse who became famous for being a pioneer in treating the war-wounded, during the Crimean War. She is best known in history by nickname the "Lady of the Lamp", because use of this instrument to aid in lighting to assist the wounded during the night.
His contribution in nursing, being a pioneer in the use of the biomedical model, based on the medicine practiced by doctors.
He also contributed in the field of statistics, being a pioneer in the use of methods of visual representation of information, such as pie (usually known as pie chart type) initially created by William Playfair.

What is nursing?

“Nursing is a science and art. Based on a body of knowledge and practices covering the state's of health, disease and personal transactions mediated, professional, scientific, aesthetic, ethical and policy of caring for human beings”

Nursing is an art and a science care whose essence and specificity is careful to human beings, individually, in the family or in the community so integral and holistic, developing autonomously or in a team, protection, promotion activities, prevention and recovery of health.

The knowledge that underlies the nursing care must be built at the intersection of philosophy, that answers the big question an existential human science and technology, having the formal logic as a normative correction officer and ethics, epistemological approach effectively committed to human emancipation and evolution of societies.

Florence Nightingale outlined how nursing assistance's goal to keep the person under the best possible conditions, in order that the nature can act on it.

It is bounded nursing activities to caring and clarity that there is no cure, but don't exits cure without care.