Exploring faculty health and wellbeing: creating a caring scholarly community

‘Something has to change’: A collaborative journey towards academic well-being through critical reflexive practice

Academic well-being is increasingly being eroded by the ever-shifting demands of the neoliberal university. As stressed early-career research-path academics, we both experienced an acutely depleted sense of well-being within this context. While our struggles were neither unusual nor remarkable, they exposed the difficulties inherent in blending academic work and life outside academia. Through embarking on a process of sharing our experiences with each other, we challenged the traditional silence about stress in academia. We created a shared narrative that interwove a process of writing individual vignettes, longitudinal diarising and critical reflexive questioning. Turning a critical gaze upon our struggles was a powerful means of opening up spaces of self-care within our academic practices. Here, we present the collaborative reflexive process that we used to nurture spaces of well-being in our own academic lives and thus, draw attention to the way reflexive practice can be understood as more than a tool of the researcher, becoming a tool for the researcher. We aim to shift the predominant focus of well-being remedies from being individualised and externally-oriented, to the possibility of collectively developing self-care for well-being within our academic work.

Association of Community Health Nursing Educators 2020 Research Priorities and Research in Action Model

OBJECTIVE

The Association of Community/Public Health Nurse Educators (ACHNE) Research Priorities Subcommittee presents a report on the state of the science of public health nursing education.

DESIGN

Whittemore and Knafl's (Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2005, 52, 546) five-step integrative review was used.

SAMPLE

Fifty-two articles were reviewed.

MEASUREMENTS

Braun et al's. (Handbook of research methods in health social sciences, 2019, 843) thematic analysis methods were used.

RESULTS

Four themes emerged: (a) Community/Public Health Nursing Education and teaching strategies/modalities; (b) Clinical teaching and learning partnerships; (c) Environmental health and emergency response; and, (d) Cultural competence and awareness.

CONCLUSIONS

Themes informed the following research priorities: (a) a need for rigorous scientific studies highlighting the impact and effectiveness of Community/Public Health Nursing Education; (b) a need for evidence on faculty development, support and training related to community/public health activities; (c) a need for evidence on impact of Community/Public Health Nursing teaching on communities and students, and (d) a need for evidence on impact of C/PHNE strategies on long-term student knowledge, attitudes or behavior (competencies). Finally, a Research in Action Model is proposed as a means for continued forward movement of the discipline, connecting the three fundamental driving mechanisms.

Faculty-Student Caring Interaction in Nursing Education: An Integrative Review

Introduction: Faculty- student caring relationship in nursing education has been offered as enhancing students’ learning experiences to care , desire to care for others and self-actu­alization. This review therefore was carried out to analyze faculty-student caring interactions in nursing education.

Methods: This concept analysis of caring in the nursing education was conducted based on Broom methodology of integrative review. The literature was consisted of two books from two known theorists, and 47 relevant articles. They retrieved from English data bases including MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, SCOPUS, and SID, with based on the keywords of caring and "nursing education", during the period 2005-2014.

Results: Caring in nursing education refers to faculty-student interaction based on ethical and human values. The development of values and moral principles in education, flexibility in educational processes, application of objective patterns in learning, and dynamism in educational processes are identified as caring concept attributes in teaching-learning process. This requires environmental support, constant human relationship, and knowing. Internalization of values, achieving self-esteem, peace, and towards human evolution were the main achievements of the concept of caring in nursing education.

Conclusion: The details obtained from the dimensions of "caring" concept in this study could be utilized by nursing education researchers and designers in order to develop content and structure for educational programs.

Principle-based concept analysis: Caring in nursing education

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this principle-based concept analysis was to analyze caring in nursing education and to explain the current state of the science based on epistemologic, pragmatic, linguistic, and logical philosophical principles.

METHODS

A principle-based concept analysis method was used to analyze the nursing literature. The dataset included 46 English language studies, published from 2005 to 2014, and they were retrieved through PROQUEST, MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, SCOPUS, and SID scientific databases. The key dimensions of the data were collected using a validated data-extraction sheet. The four principles of assessing pragmatic utility were used to analyze the data. The data were managed by using MAXQDA 10 software.

RESULTS

The scientific literature that deals with caring in nursing education relies on implied meaning. Caring in nursing education refers to student-teacher interactions that are formed on the basis of human values and focused on the unique needs of the students (epistemological principle). The result of student-teacher interactions is the development of both the students and the teachers. Numerous applications of the concept of caring in nursing education are available in the literature (pragmatic principle). There is consistency in the meaning of the concept, as a central value of the faculty-student interaction (linguistic principle). Compared with other related concepts, such as "caring pedagogy," "value-based education," and "teaching excellence," caring in nursing education does not have exact and clear conceptual boundaries (logic principle).

CONCLUSION

Caring in nursing education was identified as an approach to teaching and learning, and it is formed based on teacher-student interactions and sustainable human values. A greater understanding of the conceptual basis of caring in nursing education will improve the caring behaviors of teachers, create teaching-learning environments, and help experts in curriculum development.