AS CARING AS EVER

There have been arguments that nurses are becoming careless in their roles in health institutions. People have gone further to blame the wayward behavior on the fact that nurses no longer train through apprenticeship. Nowadays most nurses are graduates from recognized institutions of knowledge. The article Caring as Ever by Stephen Wright, chair of the Sacred Space Foundation in Cumbria, seeks to negate this idea. Instead, he feels that the irresponsibility that has associated with the nursing profession has nothing to do with their training.

According to Wright (2011), there have been several cases of undergraduate nurses as well who have been associated with scandalous acts that would be as extreme as murder. This, according to him, shows that the nursing profession has always had some negative elements that caused fear and repulsion. He further argues that he is yet to see any profession that does not have such elements.

He further argues that the training system that was there before was not apprenticeship after all. It was just a way not the government employing cheap labor. The training lacked supervision which should be there during apprenticeship. According to him, the student nurses often met with difficulties such as having to make decisions well above their level of knowledge. According to him, returning to the old days will not solve the problem. Instead, it will only bring about situations where nurses turn out to be ineffective.

In conclusion, according to Wright, the nursing profession has always suffered from poor values. The claims that the mode of training is to blame for the depreciation in moral values are, however, baseless, unfounded, and lacking of evidence. Reintroducing apprenticeship will only introduce new problems in the profession and should therefore be avoided.

Refernces

Wright S. (2011). As caring as ever. Nursing Standard,26(9) pp. 26-27