nursingforsocialjustice

I was talking to a coworker recently who works for multiple housing not for profit organizations in the Vancouver area. At a certain point in the conversation we began to talk about two important issues: 1) staff burn out and 2) hiring practices. My colleague made a keen observation that…

I was engaged in a conversation with a group of mental health nurses recently where one nurse proudly spoke of the practice they used of deeply sedating patients during the night to ensure that staff were able to take an extra long break. Listening to this gave me an awful…

In the last few weeks I find myself feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness about the situation of people living with mental health issues, poverty and homelessness in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. I think this feeling of sadness was amplified by being in the DTES on social assistance cheque issue…

Despite the monumental efforts of some to live in a culture of safety and education, we still live in a culture of blame. When something goes wrong we want to know who was responsible for it. In my profession the something wrong is sometimes violence against staff as perpetrated by…

I think that one of the biggest challenges to being a mental health outreach nurse is that the trauma that my clients have experienced seems so much closer when I see them in their everyday lives. I find it much more difficult to compartmentalize their life stories now that I…

I think that we are all trying our best to be successful in our lives. I woke up this morning with this notion in my head. I am fairly certain that I may have inherently believed this, this may have been a value that I have carried with me all…

Imagine if there were people at the direct care level of health care that not only believed in making evidence meaningful to practice, but also were able to be part of more than direct patient care to make this happen. Imagine if 75% of a staff nursing job was direct…

Do you ever feel like your life is a series of false starts? I feel like this grand idea that I had to impart my nursing wisdom on the world has been brewing for years, and yet I have not been able to build the momentum to get the ball…

I think that I severely overestimated the amount of free time I would have working full time and raising 2 kids because it has been a long time since my initial posting. I assure you that I still am bursting with blog writing vigor and a new-found passion to use…

Today is the first day of my journey into both web design and nurse blogging. The blogging is kind of an old interest as I have had an online journal since I was in high school, and, come to think of it, the web design interest is kind of an…