Starting. Beginning. Renewing. It’s a New Year! What’s happening in your nursing practice that needs reflection? How do you “be your own nurse” in 2024?
Throughout 2023, the world seemed different. Do you remember when you drove to work during the pandemic and you were the only car on the road? Now, there are cars everywhere! The way that we practiced nursing before the pandemic was different than during the pandemic. Now, after the pandemic our nursing practice, in many spaces, is different than both of those times. How do we find our stability?
Consider the Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements. Perhaps nothing is more stabilizing, centering, or foundational than what we stand for and aspire to become as nurses and as a nursing profession.
A good place to start is Provision 9, which focuses on nursing values, nursing profession integrity, and social justice and policy. How do we do that as individual nurses? How do we do that as the nursing profession? Provision 9, Interpretive Statement 9.1 points the way: As nurses, our collective voice is represented by the professional nursing organizations sharing our voice to the public. Traditionally, when elected officials or mainstream media wanted to know nursing opinion or needed nursing expertise, they reached out to professional nursing organizations. There was confidence that opinions and expertise (evidence-based practice) was confirmed by large groups of nurses.
Is this still true in the age of social media? Individual citizens have an easy way to share their voice with the public. Elected officials and mainstream media are reaching out to social media post authors and bloggers. The individual “citizen journalist” can broadcast their views and public “conversation” appears to happen with replies, likes, and promotes.
You, being your own nurse, have an easy way to share your voice through social media platforms. You can share your values with the world. Reflecting on page 52 of the Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements, as a professional nurse, how do you self-reflect, critically self-analyze, and evaluate what you share as a “citizen journalist”? How do you support the integrity of the nursing profession? Ultimately, how do you inspire trust in the human beings for whom you provide nursing care?
Nursing isn’t a solo practice. Nursing is relational. It happens in relationship to another human being. Our voices as nurses are important and so is our collective voice as a profession. Let’s find the center.
Amy E. Rettig, DNP, MALM, MSN, BSN, RN, ACNS-BC, PMHNP-BC, provides nursing care for both professional and non-professional caregivers. She presents, publishes and studies well-being (developing the caregiver within) from the perspectives of holism, caring relationships, and systems.
