scholarly journals Nurses’ perceptions of professional dignity in hospital settings

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sabatino ◽  
Mari Katariina Kangasniemi ◽  
Gennaro Rocco ◽  
Rosaria Alvaro ◽  
Alessandro Stievano

Background: The concept of dignity can be divided into two main attributes: absolute dignity that calls for recognition of an inner worth of persons and social dignity that can be changeable and can be lost as a result of different social factors and moral behaviours. In this light, the nursing profession has a professional dignity that is to be continually constructed and re-constructed and involves both main attributes of dignity. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine how nurses described nursing’s professional dignity in internal medicine and surgery departments in hospital settings. Research design: The research design was qualitative. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the ethics committees of the healthcare organizations involved. All the participants were provided with information about the purpose and the nature of the study. Participants: A total of 124 nurses participated in this study. Method: The data were collected using 20 focus group sessions in different parts of Italy. The data were analysed by means of a conventional inductive content analysis starting from the information retrieved in order to extract meaning units and sorting the arising phenomena into conceptually meaningful categories and themes. Results: Nursing’s professional dignity was deeply embedded in the innermost part of individuals. Regarding the social part of dignity, a great importance was put on the values that compose nursing’s professional identity, the socio-historical background and the evolution of nursing in the area considered. The social part of dignity was also linked to collaboration with physicians and with healthcare assistants who were thought to have a central role in easing work strain. Equally important, though, was the relationship with peers and senior nurses. Conclusion: The organizational environments under scrutiny with their low staffing levels, overload of work and hierarchical interactions did not promote respect for the dignity of nurses. To understand these professional values, it is pivotal to comprehend the role of different health professions in their cultural milieu and the evolution of the nursing profession in diverse countries.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidra Abbas ◽  
Rubeena Zakar ◽  
Florian Fischer

Abstract Background: In a patriarchal social system, a women-dominated profession like nursing is mostly seen as a disempowered group due to its stereotypical image and negative connotations. The low social prestige of this profession is based on the roles typically assigned to men and women to maintain gender identity according to their performance and embodiment. The aim of this study was to explore the social and cultural challenges faced by nurses while creating their professional image within the regional context of Lahore (Punjab) in Pakistan. Methods: A qualitative research design was chosen to conduct one-to-one, in-depth interviews with twelve nurses. Recruitment was based on purposive sampling from three large public hospitals in Lahore to learn about nurses’ perceptions of social and cultural challenges in the nursing profession. A thematic analysis was conducted using the data analysis software package NVIVO 12 Plus. Results: Cultural values give preference for female nurses. We have identified four major themes related to the social and cultural challenges facing the nursing profession: 1) gender-segregated profession, 2) inappropriate portrayals by the media, 3) issues around marriage settlement, and 4) identity from a religious perspective. These conflicts are affecting the professional status and changing perceptions of nurses, who either do not choose to remain in the nursing profession or do not recommend nursing as a career option. These ongoing constraints are still perpetuating and increasing shortage of nurses within the Pakistani healthcare system. Conclusion: The present study solely highlights nurses’ perspectives on redefining gender roles and gender integration within the nursing profession. It argues that there is a need for positive portrayals in the media for the removal of public misperceptions related to nursing. This would reduce the shortage of nurses along with increasing retention and improving the quality of healthcare delivered to the public.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidra Abbas ◽  
Rubeena Zakar ◽  
Florian Fischer

Abstract Background In a patriarchal social system, a women-dominated profession like nursing is mostly seen as a disempowered group due to its stereotypical image and negative connotations. The low social prestige of this profession is based on the roles typically assigned to men and women to maintain gender identity according to their performance and embodiment. The aim of this study was to explore the social and cultural challenges faced by nurses while creating their professional image within the regional context of Lahore (Punjab) in Pakistan.Methods A qualitative research design was chosen to conduct one-to-one, in-depth interviews with twelve nurses. Recruitment was based on purposive sampling from three large public hospitals in Lahore to learn about nurses’ perceptions of social and cultural challenges in the nursing profession. A thematic analysis was conducted using the data analysis software package NVIVO 12 Plus.Results Certain social and cultural stigmas attached to the nursing profession affect its status and changing perceptions of nurses, who either do not choose to remain or do not recommend nursing as a career option. This is still a major barrier that perpetuates the shortage of nurses in the healthcare system. Four major themes relating to the social and cultural challenges facing the nursing profession were identified: 1) it is a gender-segregated profession with less acceptance of male nurses; 2) inappropriate portrayal as low-profile professionals having little visibility in the media; 3) issues around finding a marriage partner or being refused when introduced as a nursing professional; 4) nurses’ identity from a religious perspective with the label of being impure due to touching male patients during caring work.Conclusion The present study solely highlights nurses’ perspectives on redefining gender roles and gender integration within the nursing profession. It argues that there is a need for positive portrayals in the media for the removal of public misperceptions related to nursing. This would reduce the shortage of nurses along with increasing retention and improving the quality of healthcare delivered to the public.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidra Abbas ◽  
Rubeena Zakar ◽  
Florian Fischer

Abstract Background: In a patriarchal social system, a women-dominated profession like nursing is mostly seen as a disempowered group due to its stereotypical image and negative connotations. The low social prestige of this profession is based on the roles typically assigned to men and women to maintain gender identity according to their performance and embodiment. The aim of this study was to explore the social and cultural challenges faced by nurses while creating their professional image within the regional context of Lahore (Punjab) in Pakistan. Methods: A qualitative research design was chosen to conduct one-to-one, in-depth interviews with twelve nurses. Recruitment was based on purposive sampling from three large public hospitals in Lahore to learn about nurses’ perceptions of social and cultural challenges in the nursing profession. A thematic analysis was conducted using the data analysis software package NVIVO 12 Plus. Results: Cultural values give preference for female nurses. We have identified four major themes related to the social and cultural challenges facing the nursing profession: 1) gender-segregated profession, 2) inappropriate portrayals by the media, 3) issues around marriage settlement, and 4) identity from a religious perspective. These conflicts are affecting the professional status and changing perceptions of nurses, who either do not choose to remain in the nursing profession or do not recommend nursing as a career option. These ongoing constraints are still perpetuating and increasing shortage of nurses within the Pakistani healthcare system. Conclusion: The present study solely highlights nurses’ perspectives on redefining gender roles and gender integration within the nursing profession. It argues that there is a need for positive portrayals in the media for the removal of public misperceptions related to nursing. This would reduce the shortage of nurses along with increasing retention and improving the quality of healthcare delivered to the public.


Author(s):  
Levente Littvay

As recently as 2005, John Alford and colleagues surprised political science with their twin study that found empirical evidence of the genetic transmission of political attitudes and behaviors. Reactions in the field were mixed, but one thing is for sure: it is not time to mourn the social part of the social sciences. Genetics is not the deterministic mechanism that social scientists often assume it to be. No specific part of DNA is responsible for anything but minute, indirect effects on political orientations. Genes express themselves differently in different contexts, suggesting that the political phenomenon behavioral political scientists take for granted may be quite volatile; hence, the impact of genetics is also much less stable in its foundations than initially assumed. Twin studies can offer a unique and powerful avenue to study these behavioral processes as they are more powerful than cross-sectional (or even longitudinal) studies not only for understanding heritability but also for asserting the direction of causation, the social (and, of course, genetic) pathways that explain how political phenomena are related to each other. This chapter aims to take the reader through this journey that political science has gone through over the past decade and a half and point to the synergies behavioral political science and behavioral genetics offer to the advancement of the discipline.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-11
Author(s):  
Maud O. Jansen ◽  
Peter Angelos ◽  
Stephen J. Schrantz ◽  
Jessica S. Donington ◽  
Maria Lucia L. Madariaga ◽  
...  

Clinical trials emerged in rapid succession as the COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented need for life-saving therapies. Fair and equitable subject selection in clinical trials offering investigational therapies ought to be an urgent moral concern. Subject selection determines the distribution of risks and benefits, and impacts the applicability of the study results for the larger population. While Research Ethics Committees monitor fair subject selection within each trial, no standard oversight exists for subject selection across multiple trials for the same disease. Drawing on the experience of multiple clinical trials at a single academic medical centre in the USA, we posit that concurrent COVID-19 trials are liable to unfair and inequitable subject selection on account of scientific uncertainty, lack of transparency, scarcity and, lastly, structural barriers to equity compounded by implicit bias. To address the critical gap in the current literature and international regulation, we propose new ethical guidelines for research design and conduct that bolsters fair and equitable subject selection. Although the proposed guidelines are tailored to the research design and protocol of concurrent trials in the COVID-19 pandemic, they may have broader relevance to single COVID-19 trials.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Isaura Gomes de Carvalho Aquino ◽  
Maria Rosângela Batistoni ◽  
Graziela Scheffer Machado

The aim of the current article is to present results of three studies about the so-called Reconceptualisation Movement in Brazil, based on the historical rescue of significant and exemplifying expressions used in the country from 1960 to 1970. The analysed studies have focused on investigating the economic and social significance of the military dictatorship to Brazilian society. They aimed at unveiling the historical background, sociopolitical bases and theoretical-methodological references guiding social service professional projects in the country at that time. The herein conducted analysis was based on documentary and bibliographic sources, collections, and testimonials to identify the strengths of projects that were in compliance with, and in opposition to, each other due to the tense theoretical and ideological dispute for hegemony in the Brazilian social service renewal process.


2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (6) ◽  
pp. 1196-1213
Author(s):  
Regina Cortina

Background/Context This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth. Purpose/Objective With globalization—a term that signifies the ever-increasing interconnectedness of markets, communications and human migration—social and economic divides in countries around the world are hindering the access of many people to the major institutions of society, including and especially education. My goal in this essay is to reflect on the dilemma that John Dewey identified in Democracy and Education regarding the “full social ends of education” and the agency of the nation-state. Against the historical background of the nation-state's control of the meaning of public education, my intent is to search for new meanings defining public education through human agency and social movements, using Mexico as an example. My essay, written on the 200th anniversary of Mexico's Independence in 1810 and on the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, reflects on these two major events and how they contributed to shifts in the social meaning of education over time. Two groups—women and indigenous people—did not benefit proportion-ately from education, citizenship and social opportunity. My argument is that the empowerment of women and indigenous groups took place not because of state action but because of social movements contesting the restricted identity and incomplete citizenship provided for them through the capacity of the nation-state. It is crucial to understand the “full social ends of education” to see the way forward in strengthening education, citizenship and social opportunity. Conclusions/ Recommendations My participation in the faculty seminar and the readings we discussed led me towards the rediscovery of the writings of John Dewey, which stimulated my thinking about the “full social ends of education” against the historical background of the nation-state's control of the meaning of public education and my own inquiry to search for new meanings of public education through human agency and social movements. Moreover, the writings of Dewey during his visit to Mexico in 1926 opened a new research agenda for me. I have become increasingly interested in a period of Mexican education that is not well researched, particularly the role of John Dewey's students at Teachers College, Columbia University in the development of Mexico's public education system during the 1920s and 1930s and the creation of the Mexican rural schools and the middle schools during that era.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (22) ◽  

Along with the widespread rise in immigration and the increase in the number of immigrants, academic interest in migration research has also grown. Although there are many studies conducted in various fields, the number of studies who approached migration from an intersectional perspective is rather small. The number of studies approaching migration and the social psychological processes of migrants from the perspective of intersectionality is even smaller in Turkey. Considering the large number of immigrants in Turkey, it is obviously essential to understand and study intersectionality in these particular contexts. Therefore, this article is written to explicate the concept of intersectionality and review migration studies adopting an intersectional approach. The basis of the concept of intersectionality, historical background that led to the birth of it, its subtypes as well as the importance of race, class and gender in intersectionality are among the issues discussed in this article. Moreover, with respect to migration studies from the perspective of intersectionality, studies conducted in various culturally diverse countries are outlined. The last but not the least, the prominence of conducting research on intersectionality in the Turkish context is also emphasized. In this review, we aim to present the literature to students and academics in the field as well as to provide direction for future research. Keywords: Migration, intersectionality, intersectional discrimination


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leepo Johannes Modise

This paper consists of five parts. Firstly, a brief historical background of reformation will be discussed as an exercise to remember reformation. Secondly, we review the role of the ecumenical church (SACC) prior to democracy in South Africa. The purpose for focusing on the role of the church from this period is that it gives us a model to follow in our involvement in socio-economic transformation. Thirdly, the social and economic challenges facing the church and society in democratic South Africa will be discussed. Fourthly, we debate the role of the ecumenical church (SACC) in democratic South Africa. Fifthly, the article explores what role the Uniting Reformed Church in South Africa (URCSA) is playing (descriptive) and ought to play (normative) through all her structures to transform the socio-economic situation in South Africa.


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