Mark Lazenby, PhD, RN, FAAN
Dean and Professor
Nursing’s promise is to care for people as they would care for themselves, if they were able to do so.
To fulfill this promise, nurses must be alert to each patient’s unique story. They must put aside assumptions and stereotypes, and see beyond vulnerabilities. They must see, in the person they care for, an individual with their own experiences, priorities, attitudes and values, and they must treat them accordingly.
There are many people for whom the experience of being rendered invisible is all too familiar. People of color know what it is to be at risk of prejudicial assumptions every day. So do people who have suffered pejorative attitudes toward their gender, sexuality, disability or other protected characteristic. And so do we all, as we begin to age. America is prejudiced against aging. This, despite the fact that our longevity is a triumph of human achievement, and that being older is an entirely natural phase of life.
Our greatest fears associated with age are ill health, loss of loved ones, loss of independence, mental degeneration, and death—but the list goes on. These misfortunes can happen at any age, although they of course become more likely as the years pile up behind us. As we grow older, therefore, our fears are compounded by the fear of becoming identified with such misfortunes, as we were not when we were young. We fear being ignored and unrecognized within an older body, while to ourselves, we remain the people we always were. We fear the invisibility of age.”
But we are visible to nurses.
This issue of Humanitas looks at nursing’s role in the positive experience of living long. Our feature article confronts ageism, examining how the profession must act against pejorative assumptions and assert the unique humanity of the older patient, for the good of us all.
This strong theme is carried through the work of our clinical faculty and the programs of research being driven by both faculty and associates. Our main photo story invites you to celebrate, via the activities of three life-long friends of nursing, the enormous value of later life, for the individual and for the world.
