Promising Practices and Unfinished Business: Fostering Equity and Excellence for Black and Latino Males

Boston Public Schools (BPS) commissioned companion studies as part of its efforts to address achievement gaps for Black and Latino males. The first study revealed the increasing diversity of Black and Latino males and stark opportunity gaps throughout the system that contribute in large part to wide attainment gaps for these students. We hypothesized that in schools doing comparatively better with Black or Latino males than their counterparts, educators would be strategically and comprehensively implementing evidence-based cultural, structural, and instructional practices tailored to meet their the needs and aspirations of these students. Through qualitative case studies of four schools, we identified several cross-cutting themes that provide the district and school leaders with some positive news about effective practices found in all good schools: strong school cultures, professional collaboration, differentiated instruction, and, in the elementary schools, family engagement. While we observed pockets of best practices specific to Black and Latino male education, we also brought to light unfinished business, in that none of the four case study schools had an intentional and comprehensive schoolwide approach to educating Black and Latino males. This lack of intentionality resulted in a paucity of evidence that the school administration and faculty as a whole: (a) know and value students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds; (b) adopt explicit and responsive approaches to race and gender; and (c) develop and implement a comprehensive approach to culturally responsive curriculum and instruction. We posit that lack of knowledge, intentionality, and coherence impedes further progress in educating Black and Latino males, and has implications for educators in schools, for staff members in community partner organizations, and for family members of BPS students

Reclaiming our sacredness as nurse healers

The nurse-patient relationship encompasses the richness of being in a relationship with another human being. When viewed through a healthcare lens a patient\u27s health, illness, and healing are often defined by procedural testing, diagnosis, and a plan for treatment. Within the community of professional nurses, it is known that healing involves more than an attempt to physically repair the human body. The use of nursing theory, caring science, and recognition of the patient in their wholeness guides nursing practice. Nurses incorporate the use of experiential wisdom (metis) in caring for the life force of another human being in the effort to restore the patient\u27s wholeness. During caring moments nurses have the ability to touch the patient\u27s soul so the individual can heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The profession of a nurse is physically, emotionally, and spiritually challenging. As a profession, there is a profound personal and professional responsibility to care for oneself before extending care to another human being. Nurses must care for their own souls so that nursing can reclaim the historic sacredness as nurse healers. The capacity for intentional caring is magnified when integrated with the use of healing rituals and ceremonies as self-care strategies and synthesized with caring, environment, and integral nursing theory

Aligning Theory and Evidence-Based Practices to Enhance Human Flourishing in Nurse Executives

Today’s nurse executives lead highly complex and bureaucratic organizations undergoing sweeping reform at an unprecedented rate of change. Change and high levels of stress are the norm in health care, and ineffective stress management can hinder organizational performance and adversely impact personal wellbeing. The risks of nurse executive burnout and unprecedented turnover led to the development of a 4-hour program to teach theory-guided and evidence-based stress management techniques. The program was intended to increase awareness, enhance effective stress management skills, and improve the nurse executive’s ability to flourish in high stress environments. A pre-intervention and 6-month post-intervention assessment (n=12) was conducted, and the results for 12 matched pairs were statistically significant for improved personal and organizational indicators of stress over time, indicating improved vitality, engagement, and sustainability. Findings validated concerns regarding the prevalence of stress in the nurse executive group and demonstrated positive outcomes for key performance indicators that support personal wellbeing, resilience, retention, and success. One nurse executive identified she no longer felt like leaving the organization and nurse executive leader turnover has decreased measurably following the intervention. The relative low costs, positive outcomes, and flexible format of this program make it feasible to support spread and enculturation of improved stress management practices that benefit both employee and organization through existing orientation and ongoing professional development strategies

Staying Alive: A Nursing Care Model in the Technical Delivery of Dialysis

The purpose of this project is to develop a model of a caring-healing transformational relationship by using Watson\u27s caring theory to enhance the patient\u27s experience on dialysis. The nursing model in a large tertiary hospital in the Midwest uses relationship-based care to identify nursing roles that will be used in the mentoring model. Transpersonal caring promotes the caring practice which is the essence of nursing and is associated with a greater sense of self-knowledge, self-control and well being with increased nurse satisfaction. It is the authentic caring knowledge and caring practice integrated in the environment for the delivery of the technical skills that supports the development of a caring-healing relationship. l

State Of The Science Of Nursing Presence Revisited: Knowledge For Preserving Nursing Presence Capability

Nursing presence has been a central focus for theorists, researchers, educators, and practicing professional nurses for over a half a century. Knowledge development and measurement of this experience is crucial at a time when human communication is becoming more impersonal, and nursing presence capability is potentially declining. A literature search was conducted using Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and other discipline-specific databases. Extensive manual review of all relevant journals, reference lists, and additional publications were explored and synthesized. This article provides an updated state of the science report on nursing presence in regard to cross-discipline conceptual comparison, nursing theoretic model development, and instrument development

Creating a Culture of Caring in the Perianesthesia Practice

Caring has been described as the essence of nursing. What nurses do as they care for patients and others is multi-dimensional, complex, and essential. Nursing\u27s ability to clearly define and articulate what caring is guides the ethics, values, decisions, and foundations of nursing practice. Caring evokes a range of perceptions, feelings, and experiences for the patient and nurse in the perianesthesia specialty setting. Caring as a pillar of the nursing profession is explored on several levels for the perianesthesia setting. Aspects of caring include perceptions of caring, what denotes a caring environment, the role of nursing leadership in a caring environment, the impact of caring and healing for patients, nurses, and others in the health care field. A proposed model for nursing practice based upon Watson\u27s concepts of caritas nursing and its processes provides the theoretical framework for the nursing professionals and the patients and families served. Interventions that have been currently implemented in the perianesthesia setting of a Midwestern hospital along with a proposed outline for future plans are reviewed and future plans outlined

Life, Labor, and Value: Recreating Affective Food Ecologies Through Interspecies Cooperation

As our most complex and intimate relationship with wider environments, food and agriculture provide important opportunities for exploring affective ecologies. Here I re-visit some of the ways that Modern constructs of humans as radically different from environments and of value as a function of exchange work to produce agricultural systems that are ever less affective and more problematic. In an effort to construct value in a way more applicable to the whole of our biosphere, and not only to humans, I take up an explicitly non-Modern Heraclitean perspective which conceives of all life as essentially relational. I then extend Marx’s anthropocentric work to argue that all life labors to organize stocks and flows in environments which it finds useful and thus valuable. As co-adaptation illustrates, life often produces value by finding usefulness in the by-products of other lives. Thus, we may understand ecological relationships as guided by the creation of abundance rather than the imposition of scarcity. From the Marxist tradition I then enlist the concepts of cooperation, which produces value synergistically, and exploitation which destroys the ability to create value, to suggest a basis for the evaluation of socio-natural trajectories, for creating more and less affective food ecologies

El buen negocio de la inclusión. Una reflexión para la realización de los negocios más éticos

With the purpose of crafting a coherent argument in favor of more business inclusiveness, this paper explores the convenience of a wellaccepted model for Corporate Social Performance. After a detailed examination of all its parts, two ethical perspectives –utilitarianism and deontology- are adopted as prisms to evaluate the compatibility of the model with sound moral thinking. At the end, a model of ethical funneling is proposed as a means to enhance business inclusion and performance.Con el propósito de articular una argumentación coherente a favor de una mayor inclusión en los negocios, este artículo explora la conveniencia de un modelo muy aceptado de Desempeño Social Corporativo. Después de una mirada detallada de sus partes, se adoptan dos perspectivas éticas –el utilitarismo y la deontología- como prismas para evaluar la compatibilidad del modelo con el pensamiento ético. El artículo concluye proponiendo un modelo de “embudo ético”, que busca fomentar la inclusión y mejorar el desempeño de los negocios