The future

"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing
while others judge us by what we have already done"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Most recently Mr. Duckett the CEO of Alberta Health Services was quoted saying that "nursing’s future is not in nursing’s hands."
The jobs offered to us may not be in our control but who we are and how we do what we do — our standards — these are definitely in our hands and always have been.
What I saw happen during this recent health crisis involving H1N1 was nothing short of phenomenal. Nurses stepped up and stepped back into the front lines to fill a need. As always when we are needed nurses have been there. This may not equate to us having control over our work environment but we do have control over our actions.
As with lots of things in life it sometimes takes a crisis or specific event to push us to the wall and create a place where we see ourselves a bit more clearly. It changes the lens we look at ourselves with.
During this time of illness and death I have stretched myself to step back into a clinical role. I was doing tasks I had walked away from10 years ago and I was apprehensive and nervous about my abilities. However, I knew I needed to make sure I was competent in doing them as I was responsible for my practice. This is part of the standards of nursing that I believe in and adhere to.
As I looked around at the people working in the make-shift clinic we had created, I realized I was not alone. Each of us was out of our normal environments — our comfort zones.
Within a few hours I could feel myself relax and I could feel a difference in my coworkers. It was like a collective sigh as a sense of okay-ness settled in. Our skills were there, we had to work at bringing them up to speed but they had not disappeared over time.
The staffing consisted of a mix of student nurses, new graduate nurses, practical nurses, registered nurses, pharmacists, clerks, volunteers and a physician. However, due to the circumstances everyone was on fairly equal footing. We all were out of our regular environment, put in green scrubs and given new duties. In effect it striped away the status of position from all except the lead RN on each shift. There was a feeling of support and comradery amongst the group. I found it a very pleasant place to work.
Then it was over and we walked away from our new environment and some newly formed relationships. It seems surreal now that I am back just doing my other job.
Will it be any different when others change what roles we are hired for? I believe we can and will simply add yet another dimension to our skill sets. My hope is we will not take ourselves out of the picture by adapting so much we no longer know who we are. Surely we can adapt and change and not lose control over who we are, where we came from and what we stand for. It is time for nursing to be clear to everyone that in our diversity we have not lost our basics.
As an early nursing pioneer Virgina Henderson once said:
"The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual (sick or well), in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will, or knowledge. And to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible"