Vivian Bullwinkel : a model of resilience and a symbol of strength

Background: The story of one of Australia’s most well-known women in history, Vivian Bullwinkel, is a symbol of strength for nursing. She and her companions who were prisoners of war during World War II, refused the position of victim and went on to contribute much to the world aftertheir ordeal. Discussion: These women embody important elements of resilience that it is our duty to conveyto generations of nurses so that they may be inspired to rise above adversity, foster connection with like-minded others, use adaptive coping mechanisms and soft power, be gentle yet per-sistent in their resistance practices, and most of all to do good work throughout their nursing careers.This paper argues that oppression theory provides only a limited understanding of present woes affecting nursing. Resilience theory suggests future actions and is therefore further enlightening. By examining the experiences of Bullwinkel, students can be assisted to see that stress has been a constant theme across nursing history. However ways of rising above adver-sity can be illuminated by critically and deeply examining aspects of iconic leaders and heroic stories such as can be found in the life of Vivian Bullwinkel. Summary: Students who are offered the chance to examine this symbol of strength in our profession may decide to internalise some of the positive traits and resolve to use the behaviours she and her contemporaries used to help them create for themselves a fulfilling career, pride in their profession and strong sense of purpose

Empowerment Strategies for Nurses: Developing Resiliency in Practice

The book describes a diverse range of proactive and preventive approaches nurses can harness in a variety of healthcare contexts. These strategies help develop strength, flexibility, and the determination to adapt to professional challenges that may at first seem daunting. Strategies are presented to conquer self-defeating thoughts, connect with positive peers, and emulate positive leadership attributes. Chapters present first-hand accounts of “resilience in action” and extensive examples that showcase evidence-based resilience strategies, along with discussion questions, creative thinking exercises, and application activities

Solution focused nursing : a fitting model for mental health nurses working in a public health paradigm

The Australian Federal Government health agenda is advocating an extension of public health principles across all levels of the health sector. Since mental health nurses have long been proponents of public health and health promoting behaviours, an opportunity exists for this specialty of nursing to extend their influence and contribution within health. Solution focused nursing (SFN), a model that emerged from mental health practice, offers a framework to assist mental health nurses and leaders to more clearly practise public health principles within nursing and articulate that practice – for it is in the articulation of practice that nurses and nursing is made visible and valued. This paper aims to expand on and reiterate the SFN model, showing how it connects to public health principles anddevelops the mental health nurse’s role – particularly in those clinical areas that require more thanmedical management and illness stabilization

Awake and aware : thinking constructively about the world through Transformative Learning

This chapter explores important components of Transformative Learning so that readers too become awake to and aware that dominant modes of teaching can be silencing and disempowering; teachers need to find ways to sensitize learners to issues that demand all of our attention; activities need to he purposeful so they activate learners to generate solutions to world problems and are relevant to practice

Fragile: An examination of the nurse as gothic trope and Its significance in today's turbulent world of health care

In popular culture, nurses are often represented as a liminal figure. In some ways, this reflects the reality of practice when nurses play a role in between health and wellness and when patients are hovering in states between life and death. In this dimension, modes of operating may be less concrete, more ambiguous and difficult to articulate. Horror narratives explore this state of inbetween-ness thoroughly, and this paper suggests that there is something to be learned about nurses in horror stories that helps to understand the enduring allure of nursing as a subject. The 2005 horror film, Fragile contains numerous gothic tropes, including the hospital as inhospitable and unsafe, and the nurse as monstrous or angelic, which taps into deep-seating cultural anxieties about health-care. That is, more than just entertainment, stories of nurses as ghosts, ghouls, or sublime angels mirror a concern that society has about the trustworthiness, or otherwise, of nurses and medicine. Gothic stories set in asylums typically capitalise on the larger-than-life architectural features to conjure an anxious aesthetic, and in this film another function is apparent. The impending demolition of the historical monolith to make way for modernity is riven with suspicion. The film also plays with the notion that nursing embodies an intersection between rational logic and intuitive knowing. Contemporary Gothic theory provides an interpretive lens through which nursing’s function in horror narratives can be explored

Assessment following self-harm : nurses provide comparable risk assessment to psychiatrists but are less likely to admit for in-hospital treatment

Commentary on: Murphy E, Kapur N, Webb R, et al. Risk assessment following self-harm: comparison of mental health nurses and psychiatrists. J Adv Nurs 2011 ; 67:127-39

Looking below the surface : developing critical literacy skills to reduce the stigma of mental disorders

Although clinicians and the public are more informed about the factors that give rise to mental disorders,stigmatization does not seem to be abating. This article argues for one solution: altering the way studentsare taught, moving beyond content toward a focus on enticing attitudinal shifts, such as empathy and personalcommitment to social change. This article describes a strategy for learners to develop critical literacyskills and to acknowledge and develop their role in encouraging students to become critical agents whopossess the knowledge and courage to struggle against despair and to embrace hope

Comprehensive nurse education: A broken promise and an unrealistic ideal: Letter to the editor

Comprehensive nurse education: A broken promise and an unrealistic ideal: Letter to the edito

Thank-you cards : reclaiming a nursing student ritual and releasing its transformative potential

The giving of a ‘‘thank-you card’’ to the staff of a health service in which clinical experience was gained, is common practice amongst nursing students in Australia. Group reflection, or debriefing, following the clinical experience is also a common practice. As rituals in nursing, they can become routinised, taken for-granted and have little meaning or influence. This paper discusses an educational activity devised by the author that aimed to transform a relatively innocuous practice into one that had empowering potential for students, giving them voice inthe health service culture and emphasizing the need for a more humanized workforce, one that actively seeks out opportunities to give each other helpful feedback so that change is ongoing. The activity drew upon narrative pedagogy, showing students how stories combined with rituals have transformative potential not only for themselves as students, but for the entire culture of nursing. The paper argues that cultural change need not be monumental for it to have enduring effect and it is within the jurisdiction of even the most junior student. The ‘‘thank-you card’’ ritual that students commonly use can be reclaimed and extended so that students become activists in the building of a more humanistic, supportive nursing and learning culture

Resilience : a personal attribute, social process and key professional resource for the enhancement of the nursing role

Resilience is the positive adjustment to adversity. Nursing work is characterised by assisting patients and families to cope through varying types of adversity- accidents, illness, disasters and upheaval and also in encouraging and supporting people to adapt, recover and maintain wellbeing. Thus strategies to promote resilience need to be integral to nurses’ daily practice. Adverse conditions are also commonly experienced by nurses themselves and this impacts negatively on attitude to work, stress and burnout and this affects the whole profession through ongoing shortages, and disengagement with the work still to be done by nursing in terms of research and practice development.This paper will discuss the meaning of resilience, how it has been researched and applied to health care and to nursing. It will suggest pro-active strategies that educators, researchers and clinical nurses can implement that work on building strength, focus and endurance in individuals, communities and the workplaces