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Scholarship – The way to celebrate the present and build the future
International Journal of Orthopaedic and Trauma Nursing (2010) 14, 183–184
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijotn
EDITORIAL
Scholarship – The way to celebrate the present and build the future Editorials offer the opportunity to explore and offer personal comment on often ill understood and controversial areas without having to necessarily justify and expand. To approach scholarship in orthopaedic nursing in this manner is a chance not to be missed. Orthopaedic and trauma nursing of the future will change globally at an unprecedented pace influenced by the effects of lifestyle driven changes in our society such as increases in obesity, chronic conditions such as diabetes and diseases due to drugs and alcohol abuse and tobacco smoking. Development of new technologies in treatment and diagnosis will make what we currently do dramatically different within a relatively few years. Further, patients are being asked to take on more responsibility for their own long term health and illness. The current trend is for orthopaedic and trauma nurses to widen and deepen their scope of practice becoming more specialised in their area of expertise. This demands higher levels of education and an ethos of lifelong learning and professional development. We need to be sure that this is the direction we want to move in and that it will be to the benefit of patient care. Personally, I feel this is the right direction but the implications may be the emergence of a smaller number of elite nurses supported by a team of assistants or care workers. Irrespective of the nature and proportion of different health care professionals, this will inevitably lead to a more scholarly nurse in the future. Some see this as the development of the ‘super nurse’ with connotations of the nurse becoming further disengaged from the essence of care and the diffi-
culties of fitting into the orthopaedic nursing team. It is also very complex and expensive to develop and maintain a high level of scholarship in any profession. ‘Scholarship’ is a concept or word that many nurses fear, refute and misunderstand. This editorial argues that, when applied to orthopaedic nursing practice, as a result of the inherent peer review, scholarship produces enduring products which are widely disseminated. The following hopefully illustrates, in its widest sense, what scholarship is and how and why it should be achieved. The key is in offering into the public domain the care we provide and develop as nurses. This may be through: – Teaching others how to teach and assess learning. – Teaching procedures to other health care practitioners. – Supporting others in how to design, implement, and evaluate health care programmes. – Informing others through presenting our work and publishing papers. The majority of orthopaedic nurses have already embraced and taken on scholarship in their everyday practice, although many would not recognise or call it such. The future obligates us all to think, practice and present our achievements and thoughts in a scholarly manner. However, I fully recognise that raising and airing these issues is easy. Putting in place the infrastructures to support orthopaedic nurses in bringing about the personal
1878-1241/$ - see front matter c 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijotn.2010.09.003
184
Editorial
and professional changes required is not so straight forward. As with many perennial professional issues we have tried and often failed. Have we the resilience and motivation to get it right this time? Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Peter Davis Associate Professor University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijotn
EDITORIAL
Scholarship – The way to celebrate the present and build the future Editorials offer the opportunity to explore and offer personal comment on often ill understood and controversial areas without having to necessarily justify and expand. To approach scholarship in orthopaedic nursing in this manner is a chance not to be missed. Orthopaedic and trauma nursing of the future will change globally at an unprecedented pace influenced by the effects of lifestyle driven changes in our society such as increases in obesity, chronic conditions such as diabetes and diseases due to drugs and alcohol abuse and tobacco smoking. Development of new technologies in treatment and diagnosis will make what we currently do dramatically different within a relatively few years. Further, patients are being asked to take on more responsibility for their own long term health and illness. The current trend is for orthopaedic and trauma nurses to widen and deepen their scope of practice becoming more specialised in their area of expertise. This demands higher levels of education and an ethos of lifelong learning and professional development. We need to be sure that this is the direction we want to move in and that it will be to the benefit of patient care. Personally, I feel this is the right direction but the implications may be the emergence of a smaller number of elite nurses supported by a team of assistants or care workers. Irrespective of the nature and proportion of different health care professionals, this will inevitably lead to a more scholarly nurse in the future. Some see this as the development of the ‘super nurse’ with connotations of the nurse becoming further disengaged from the essence of care and the diffi-
culties of fitting into the orthopaedic nursing team. It is also very complex and expensive to develop and maintain a high level of scholarship in any profession. ‘Scholarship’ is a concept or word that many nurses fear, refute and misunderstand. This editorial argues that, when applied to orthopaedic nursing practice, as a result of the inherent peer review, scholarship produces enduring products which are widely disseminated. The following hopefully illustrates, in its widest sense, what scholarship is and how and why it should be achieved. The key is in offering into the public domain the care we provide and develop as nurses. This may be through: – Teaching others how to teach and assess learning. – Teaching procedures to other health care practitioners. – Supporting others in how to design, implement, and evaluate health care programmes. – Informing others through presenting our work and publishing papers. The majority of orthopaedic nurses have already embraced and taken on scholarship in their everyday practice, although many would not recognise or call it such. The future obligates us all to think, practice and present our achievements and thoughts in a scholarly manner. However, I fully recognise that raising and airing these issues is easy. Putting in place the infrastructures to support orthopaedic nurses in bringing about the personal
1878-1241/$ - see front matter c 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijotn.2010.09.003
184
Editorial
and professional changes required is not so straight forward. As with many perennial professional issues we have tried and often failed. Have we the resilience and motivation to get it right this time? Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Peter Davis Associate Professor University of Nottingham, United Kingdom