nursingforsocialjustice

I get it. We are all tired. The public gets disillusioned by the the deep disconnect between research and what happens in real life. The reality of the disconnect between research and practice has been especially apparent with Covid-19. I think it’s worth mentioning that the disconnect between research and resource allocation and policy-making has also been glaringly apparent with the disparate government response to the opioid crisis over the last half decade. The value of science has been undermined by conspiracy theories, but also morally-based decision-making that I would argue maintains neoliberal values front and centre. What is evidence anyway?

We are worn out, overwhelmed by social-media postings and not sure what is fact and what is fiction. I get it. From a public perspective there is a lot going on and, even from the perspective of someone who works as a nurse in the healthcare system, who has graduate degrees in nursing, someone who knows the system – navigating the system is still a challenge.

To illustrate this I will share with you a story from my family life.

On Friday my oldest son broke his wrist. My partner took him to the emergency department of our local hospital. My partner is also a nurse. His experience as a nurse and a caregiver has provided him with knowledge of the system. Their experience last Friday was not great. It began with the disinterested registration clerk, and extended to my son eaves dropping on the not so private transfer of care of a hand-cuffed, distressed patient from police to the mental health emergency nurse.

The waiting, the lack of privacy, the mandatory filling in of forms that were not well explained in terms of what the information was for, nor where the information was going. This is the mystery of the healthcare experience. And so, I understand that sometimes I am the clinician, but sometimes my family and I are the patient. And this is where my disorienting dilemma lies. Where does nurse end and patient begin?

The juncture between researching the system, and being a service user in the system is where my disillusionment is amplified, where my existential crises lie. What actually is the connection between what I do as a PhD nursing student, what any of us do as graduate students, as researchers, and what actually happens in patient care? Do my philosophical musings, my challenging of dominant narratives, my exploration of nursing history actually matter…to someone more than me and a handful of other academics or clinicians who are equally as interested in my area of interest? This is where I am stuck. This is where I question if this actually matters.

What value is nursing philosophy or nursing history, when at the direct care level, a parent of a child who broke his wrist and has been waiting 90 minutes for an appointment they thought was scheduled and told a demographic form they fill in themselves with information that they thought they already gave in the last appointment is a pre-requisite only to be seen for 5 minutes? What is this strange system that leaves a parent and child wondering where that information is going, and why the waiting game for the doctor was necessary when it was mostly the orthopedic technician (they’re not really sure, they didn’t introduce their-self) putting on the cast? And why did they have to take half a day off of work for what they were told would be a 20 minute, pre-scheduled appointment but ended up taking 2 hours?

And so, I see where the juncture between research and practice is like an an aspirational dream more than a welcoming bridge to collaborations in health.

Peace,

Michelle D.