Power of Nursing Overview

Course Description

The Power of Nursing is a 15-hour elective course that utilizes discovery model guidelines for nursing students and graduate nurses consisting of five sessions optimally spaced two weeks apart. Each three-hour session is divided into a large-group and small-group experience. Both course directors and nurses recruited from nursing school faculty and the larger nursing community facilitate small groups. The course is a seamless process with each session building upon the insights and content of the previous session. The five session topics are:

  • Session 1: Remembering Authenticity and Wholeness
  • Session 2: Disappointment, Loss and Grief: Experiencing Your
    Healing Presence
  • Session 3: Discovering Your Healing Lineage and Personal Healing Qualities
  • Session 4: The Courage to Make Your Power and Perspective Visible
  • Session 5: Calling and Commitment: Service as a Way of Life

About the Discovery Model

The course is based on a discovery model in which there are no experts, no right answers and it is acceptable to “not know.” The wisdom in the collective life experience of the group is clarified and harvested and a spirit of curiosity is encouraged. Course directors participate in the exercises and join with participants in sharing their insights and perspectives. This model encourages respect for others, self-exploration and self trust, and allows for personal ownership of the fundamental principles of healing. The discovery model is both didactic and experiential; about 10 percent of the course time uses a didactic approach, which takes place at the beginning of all sessions. Non-cognitive methodologies such as reflection on life experience or personal values comprise the other 90 percent of the course and take place in both large and small group meetings.

Goals & Objectives

GOALS

  • Create a safe space in which to experience nonjudgmental, noncompetitive, collegial relationships that support self-care and professional growth.
  • Enable all participants to identify and acknowledge the importance of the unique qualities and perspectives they bring to their work.
  • Develop a community of professional support.
  • Offer an experience of the power of healing presence and generous listening to promote the transformation of loss.
  • Connect participants with personal lineage holders past and present who embody the art of healing.
  • Explore experiences of personal courage and ways to access and strengthen its core.
  • Explore the values embedded in their intention to practice nursing.

The Power of Nursing Course furthermore will provide an opportunity for academic and community nurses to:

  • Consolidate at greater depth their understanding of a new paradigm of nursing education.
  • Experience teaching from this new perspective.
  • Gain skill in small group participatory leadership.
  • Gain skill in the dissemination of innovative ideas.
  • Experience sharing the values of a personal values statement related to their nursing careers.

OBJECTIVES

  • Name and discuss with peers and faculty the unique personal dimension that they bring to their work.
  • Identify, strengthen and cultivate the human and wholistic dimensions of nursing practice.
  • Recognize and discuss the commonality of personal concerns among their peers and gain support for self-care and personal development from peers and faculty.
  • Realize the universality of loss and pain.
  • Recognize grief as a self-care strategy for nurses and identify strategies and tools of effective grieving.
  • Recognize and experience the importance of community in the healing of grief.
  • Experience the power of listening and presence to heal others.
  • Realize that who they are is as important as what they know.
  • Remember and recognize the healing qualities that are part of who they are as individuals.
  • Recognize and discuss lineage holders, healers and the values that have influenced their call to the profession.
  • Explore the quality of courage and their own sense of individual power, initiative, and leadership in the direction of care.
  • Write and verbalize a personal values statement related to their service intentions and nursing careers.
  • Utilize the skill of reflection in their professional work.
  • Form compassionate healing relationships with nurse colleagues.
  • Learn tools of self-remembering, values clarification, and stress reduction.
  • Recognize and clarify their intention to serve.
  • Form a community of service values.
  • Be able to articulate discovery discussion group guidelines and set up similar groups with peers.

Links

Questions?

For more information, please contact Evangeline Andarsio, MD at evangeline.andarsio@wright.edu or 937.245.7450 ext. 2 or Suzanne Scheller at 937-245-7450 ext. 3.

 

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