Search

This article presents consultation papers of the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting. Consultation papers prepared by the working groups are now being given a wide distribution throughout the professions of nursing, midwifery and health visiting. The task of the working groups, in considering comments will be greatly assisted if views on the recommendations and proposals in the consultation paper are channelled back through an appropriate professional organization or trade union. The Council has set up seven working groups. Each working group is looking at a particular aspect of the 1979 Act and the related future responsibilities which the Council will inherit.

This article presents information related to nursing. At a reception given by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at St James's Palace, London to mark the thirtieth birthday of The British Commonwealth Nurses War Memorial Fund, future plans were announced. The Council of the Royal College of Nursing of Great Britain has decided to create fellows from amongst its members of at least five years' standing who have made exceptional contributions to the advancement of the science and art of nursing. Fellows will be expected to have completed a course in post-basic nursing education where appropriate, and to present a paper or thesis and/or demonstrate innovation or exceptional competence in advancing nursing.

There is widespread discussion at the present time of participation--allowing members of an organization to exert an influence on the processes of decision-making. The National Health Service is not isolated from this debate and already a number of experiments have been carried out at various levels of the service to allow a wider range of opinion to influence decisions than hitherto. This paper reports on a study the author carried out into one such exercise, designed to assist a Health Board reach decisions about the long-term pattern of health care in its area. Nurses, paramedical staff and local authority staff, as well as doctors, were appointed to a series of programme planning committees to advise the Health Board on issues of long-term policy. After 2 years of operation, a study was carried out into the operation of the committees and the lessons drawn from the experience should be relevant to actual and potential members of any consultative or decision-making body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nurses in the United Kingdom spend much time attempting to fit British nursing practice into the theoretical framework of American nursing models. This is often a manipulative process in that it seeks to establish positive links with a care delivery system totally unlike our own. In the present paper the authors detail the process of establishing a new nursing model which integrates nursing curricula, education and practice to meet the needs of patients, staff and students within their own health district. An over-emphasis on lower levels of human need is common within nursing practice, which, although often blamed upon lack of human and financial resources, is also due to practitioners' misconceptions. The latter are invariably the result of a lack of an adequate or overt, practice orientated, conceptual framework. The Human Needs Model of Nursing adapts Maslow's concept of human needs to create such a conceptual framework for practice. It places equal emphasis on those patient problems which arise as the result of unmet needs at higher levels as well as those at lower levels, thereby acknowledging the holistic and dynamic nature of man. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information related to nursing. Members of the nursing profession, not only in Great Britain but throughout the World, lost a great friend earlier this year when Elise Gordon died on February 4, 1977. She possessed a rare mix of scholarship, charm and warmth, and was editor of Nursing Mirror for 25 years from 1937 to 1963 when she retired. Proposals for a radical and new reorientation of WHO's programme budget policy, to enhance its effectiveness in serving the world's neediest people, were endorsed at the 59th session of the WHO Executive Board held in Geneva this year.

Maclaren j. (2004) Journal of Advanced Nursing 45(5), 457–464 A kaleidoscope of understandings: spiritual nursing in a multi-faith society Spirituality is an increasingly discussed topic in nursing. In some parts of the UK there is a policy requirement to establish policies of spiritual health care which are appropriate to a multi-cultural society. In the nursing literature, spirituality is discussed from religious and secular perspectives which seem impossible to reconcile into a coherent philosophy. To discuss the relationship of spirituality to nursing and to suggest how we can think about spirituality as nurses working in a society of many faiths and cultures. Spirituality can be thought of in relation to individual patients and nurses. It also has significance for the profession of nursing and for health care as a whole. The difficulty of defining spirituality is discussed, and it is suggested that a definition of ‘spiritual nursing’ may be more achievable. Different concepts of spirituality are compared, including religious and secular spirituality. The relationship between religion and spirituality is seen as potentially problematic, with some religions denying the existence of secular spirituality. Secular spirituality and New Age movements are non-religious but spiritually influential phenomena. The problem for nursing is how to reconcile the immense variety of approaches to spirituality. The concept of spirituality as a meta-narrative is considered, and a postmodern appreciation of pluralism is employed as a way of embracing different spiritual realities. Spiritual nursing can be an opportunity for nurses to enlarge their understanding of the human condition rather than a narrowly defined concept to be applied within a model of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an insight to changes taking place in nursing profession. Nurses themselves are embarking on a long and penetrating period of self-examination of their own roles and priorities. As far as nurses are concerned, the present National Health Service Organization of the Great Britain is a valuable tool in this overture to long term change. It is going to enable nurses to take a major step forward, where they are going to be much more in the front line and not just as shock troops but as the leaders and governors of their own profession.

As part of a larger study, female student nurses from overseas and Britain in four training schools for the general nursing register were interviewed to obtain their perceptions of their reception at the hospital. their later welfare, and some of their general reactions to their training. Differences between the British and overseas student nurses were mainly related to experience before training and their reception at the hospital. Many similarities between the two groups were also found with respect to their later experiences and attitudes toward nursing. A proportion of the overseas students had experienced expressions of racial prejudice from patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health and social services staff have to start making a success of MITEC. This is the acronym of five major challenges— multi-professional practice, inter-agency planning, team approaches, entrepreneurialism, and consumer orientation. The new British National Vocational Qualification developments for care staff are cutting through service sector boundaries. Core skills are being identified in the context of which specific forms of service will be incidental. In the foreseeable future multidisciplinary care workers will emerge from these approaches to vocational training.