Mark Lazenby, PhD, RN, FAAN
Dean and Professor
Care, compassion, kindness: these concepts are intrinsically associated
with nurses and their work. Almost invariably, such terms are used to describe how nurses approach nursing—an approach that,
for nurses, constitutes the basis of meaningful work and hence,
a fulfilling life.
Yet where, in contemporary healthcare, are care, compassion and kindness directed toward, as well as flowing from, nurses? Particularly since the Covid pandemic, more troubling concepts are increasingly invoked wherever nursing is discussed: compassion fatigue, trauma, moral injury, moral distress. Nursing, with all its potential for fulfillment, is in danger of becoming a profession defined by burnout, as much as by the positive attributes at its core.
With this urgent dilemma in mind, this issue of Humanitas is devoted to exploration of “the nurse’s soul”—the potential and meaning of nursing for nurses.
In a special section, A Call to Meaning (page 12), I expand on the importance for nurses of reconnecting with the core values of the profession to reap its sustaining benefits. The following feature,
The Soul of Nursing (page 14), explores the very different routes through which nurses arrive at a fulfilling life.
The issue is bursting with the tales and insights of nurses who have found fulfillment in nursing in radically different ways, including our featured faculty member, vaccine educator Paola German (page 4), second-career nursing faculty and students (page 8) and ICU nurse and Sue & Bill Gross alumna Tristan Groot (page 30). We summarize our school’s ongoing post-doctoral research on burnout (page 11), and describe the work we are doing to reach out to potential nurses of tomorrow (page 22).
Finally, in our regular What’s in a Day? feature (page 20), Filippo Gatti, Chief Nurse of the International Committee of the Red Cross, describes what really matters when life is pared down to its essentials. His answers may surprise you.
