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Nursing Within a Global Context
EDITORIAL
NURSING WITHIN A GLOBAL CONTEXT
T
ECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES HAVE greatly enhanced communication potential among people across the world, allowing the transfer of more information and, thus, more awareness of health conditions around the world. As a result, it is imperative that the nursing profession emphasize the importance of global health and health care. Nurses play a key role in working with people from all over the world as our society has become much more mobile and interconnected. Additionally, with growing conflicts in the world, there is often more migration of people from one nation to another, necessitating the need for a global understanding of the delivery of optimal health care. Now more than ever, we need to take a global perspective of health. The world is a more fragile place with tenuous peace among nations, and, in some nations, there is outright war. Technology allows us to watch wars 24 hours a day, with breaking news being constant on television. When people are hurt in wars, they need health care regardless of their ethnic background or their religious views. Nurses are often on the front line in such situations, caring for patients in a world where people of different backgrounds are more interconnected than they have ever been. Technology also allows us to view strikingly disparate health conditions among peoples from different nations. When there are disparate health care conditions across the globe, nurses are often involved in addressing policy changes to help alleviate these disparities. Thomas Friedman, the journalist and author of the best-selling book The World is Flat, described the world as a place that has become bflattened,Q where people, due to this increased interconnectivity, are increasingly on a more level playing field. Although he is referring to business and economics, the concepts he raised
8755-7223/$ - see front matter
provide implications for an increased imperative for taking a global perspective of health. Friedman states, bClearly it is possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world. . .Q (p. 8). This is what Friedman means by a bflat world.Q He goes on to say that b. . . we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network, which—if politics and terrorism do not get in the way—could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and innovationQ (p. 8). Although Friedman is referring to economics and business, the concept of a flat world has important implications for health and health care, particularly in areas where the world is not flat. Increasing technological connections have not necessarily led to a level playing field in health care. In fact, Friedman refers to the bunflat worldQ (p. 377), where people in developing countries do not have access to fresh drinking water, toilets, clothes, and vaccinations. There is a 10-fold increase in children dying of vaccine-preventable diseases in this unflat world as compared to those children in the developed world (Friedman, 2005). People in the unflat world suffer disproportionately from diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and polio, to name a few. It is estimated that 1 million people in parts of the undeveloped unflat world die of malaria annually, whereas deaths from malaria in developed countries are practically nonexistent. In some southern areas of Africa, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is startling: Current estimates indicate that one third of all pregnant women in some of these areas are HIV-positive (Friedman, 2005). Such statistics have sobering implications for the health of future generations and for the tremendous need to address these issues now.
Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol 22, No 5 (September – October), 2006: pp 263– 264 A 2006 Published by Elsevier Inc.
263 doi:10.1016/j.profnurs.2006.08.002
264
We provide health care within a global context where people are connected to one another across oceans and latitudes, but, ironically, disparities in health and health care are even more highlighted within this context. We do not have a level playing field in health care as we have disproportionate health issues in certain parts of the world. Providing global health care means being aware of disparate conditions across nations—working toward the development of a flat world where health and health care are concerned. It is paradoxical that we live in a society where technology has been improved to the point where we can actually outsource diagnostic and laboratory tests to other countries for analysis but continue to witness such stark health disparities across the globe. When the war began in the Middle East this summer, the associate editors of Journal of Professional Nursing and I discussed the increasing imperative for nursing to adopt a global
EDITORIAL
perspective. We believe that the development of this global perspective begins in our nursing educational settings. We will be writing more about this in an upcoming issue. Conflict and terrorism, disparate health conditions across nations, and natural disasters make it imperative that we, as nurses, embrace a global context. It is imperative that we contribute to the provision of health care that is not based on ethnocentrism but on an appreciation for differences among human beings and for an underlying common humanity across the globe. ELLEN OLSHANSKY, DNSC, RNC, FAAN Editor
Reference Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
NURSING WITHIN A GLOBAL CONTEXT
T
ECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES HAVE greatly enhanced communication potential among people across the world, allowing the transfer of more information and, thus, more awareness of health conditions around the world. As a result, it is imperative that the nursing profession emphasize the importance of global health and health care. Nurses play a key role in working with people from all over the world as our society has become much more mobile and interconnected. Additionally, with growing conflicts in the world, there is often more migration of people from one nation to another, necessitating the need for a global understanding of the delivery of optimal health care. Now more than ever, we need to take a global perspective of health. The world is a more fragile place with tenuous peace among nations, and, in some nations, there is outright war. Technology allows us to watch wars 24 hours a day, with breaking news being constant on television. When people are hurt in wars, they need health care regardless of their ethnic background or their religious views. Nurses are often on the front line in such situations, caring for patients in a world where people of different backgrounds are more interconnected than they have ever been. Technology also allows us to view strikingly disparate health conditions among peoples from different nations. When there are disparate health care conditions across the globe, nurses are often involved in addressing policy changes to help alleviate these disparities. Thomas Friedman, the journalist and author of the best-selling book The World is Flat, described the world as a place that has become bflattened,Q where people, due to this increased interconnectivity, are increasingly on a more level playing field. Although he is referring to business and economics, the concepts he raised
8755-7223/$ - see front matter
provide implications for an increased imperative for taking a global perspective of health. Friedman states, bClearly it is possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world. . .Q (p. 8). This is what Friedman means by a bflat world.Q He goes on to say that b. . . we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network, which—if politics and terrorism do not get in the way—could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and innovationQ (p. 8). Although Friedman is referring to economics and business, the concept of a flat world has important implications for health and health care, particularly in areas where the world is not flat. Increasing technological connections have not necessarily led to a level playing field in health care. In fact, Friedman refers to the bunflat worldQ (p. 377), where people in developing countries do not have access to fresh drinking water, toilets, clothes, and vaccinations. There is a 10-fold increase in children dying of vaccine-preventable diseases in this unflat world as compared to those children in the developed world (Friedman, 2005). People in the unflat world suffer disproportionately from diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and polio, to name a few. It is estimated that 1 million people in parts of the undeveloped unflat world die of malaria annually, whereas deaths from malaria in developed countries are practically nonexistent. In some southern areas of Africa, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is startling: Current estimates indicate that one third of all pregnant women in some of these areas are HIV-positive (Friedman, 2005). Such statistics have sobering implications for the health of future generations and for the tremendous need to address these issues now.
Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol 22, No 5 (September – October), 2006: pp 263– 264 A 2006 Published by Elsevier Inc.
263 doi:10.1016/j.profnurs.2006.08.002
264
We provide health care within a global context where people are connected to one another across oceans and latitudes, but, ironically, disparities in health and health care are even more highlighted within this context. We do not have a level playing field in health care as we have disproportionate health issues in certain parts of the world. Providing global health care means being aware of disparate conditions across nations—working toward the development of a flat world where health and health care are concerned. It is paradoxical that we live in a society where technology has been improved to the point where we can actually outsource diagnostic and laboratory tests to other countries for analysis but continue to witness such stark health disparities across the globe. When the war began in the Middle East this summer, the associate editors of Journal of Professional Nursing and I discussed the increasing imperative for nursing to adopt a global
EDITORIAL
perspective. We believe that the development of this global perspective begins in our nursing educational settings. We will be writing more about this in an upcoming issue. Conflict and terrorism, disparate health conditions across nations, and natural disasters make it imperative that we, as nurses, embrace a global context. It is imperative that we contribute to the provision of health care that is not based on ethnocentrism but on an appreciation for differences among human beings and for an underlying common humanity across the globe. ELLEN OLSHANSKY, DNSC, RNC, FAAN Editor
Reference Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.