TY - JOUR
T1 - Nursing with the people
T2 - Reimagining futures for nursing
AU - Dillard-Wright, Jessica
AU - Shields-Haas, Vanessa
N1 - Funding Information:
Vanessa and Jessica acknowledge the support of the Nursing Educational Fund; they are both 2020-2021 NEF scholars. They also thank their supportive (and growing!) families.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/7
Y1 - 2021/7
N2 - We wish to advance a theory of nursing that intentionally engages in questions of politics and economics, centering equity and justice as a foundation for the provision of nursing care. As health care costs rise and health disparities widen, nurses have a clear imperative to develop alternative health care delivery models unmoored from the conventional employment and profit-driven structures that now disappoint us. This mandate arises from our disciplinary focus that emphasizes social justice as a social and moral good linked to the human services nurses provide. This kind of sociopolitical engagement is not auxiliary to nursing but rather central to our ethos. A health care environment that prioritizes profit over the well-being of people is an anathema to our disciplinary focus which, we believe, should center communities and people. The health care system that has forged nursing in the United States, transforms nursing into a commodity. This reinscribes inequality for those who are unable to access care, contributes to environmental harm through profligate hospital pollution and waste, and exploits nursing staff as workers. Nurses have a history of both upholding oppressive systems that disenfranchise segments of the public, usually poor, often People of Color, and engaging in innovative alternatives to the status quo. We wish to foster revolutionary alternative care delivery models that free us from the neoliberal confines of for-profit health care. Ultimately, we argue, nursing as a discipline and a science cannot neglect our role as whistleblowers and change agents. Nor can we presuppose that our dysfunctional and harmful health care structure in the United States is a foregone conclusion. Health care is constructed, which means it can be reconstructed. If we wish to realize our emancipatory potential as nurses, critically examining our role in upholding oppressive structures is a critical step toward a more robust future of nursing.
AB - We wish to advance a theory of nursing that intentionally engages in questions of politics and economics, centering equity and justice as a foundation for the provision of nursing care. As health care costs rise and health disparities widen, nurses have a clear imperative to develop alternative health care delivery models unmoored from the conventional employment and profit-driven structures that now disappoint us. This mandate arises from our disciplinary focus that emphasizes social justice as a social and moral good linked to the human services nurses provide. This kind of sociopolitical engagement is not auxiliary to nursing but rather central to our ethos. A health care environment that prioritizes profit over the well-being of people is an anathema to our disciplinary focus which, we believe, should center communities and people. The health care system that has forged nursing in the United States, transforms nursing into a commodity. This reinscribes inequality for those who are unable to access care, contributes to environmental harm through profligate hospital pollution and waste, and exploits nursing staff as workers. Nurses have a history of both upholding oppressive systems that disenfranchise segments of the public, usually poor, often People of Color, and engaging in innovative alternatives to the status quo. We wish to foster revolutionary alternative care delivery models that free us from the neoliberal confines of for-profit health care. Ultimately, we argue, nursing as a discipline and a science cannot neglect our role as whistleblowers and change agents. Nor can we presuppose that our dysfunctional and harmful health care structure in the United States is a foregone conclusion. Health care is constructed, which means it can be reconstructed. If we wish to realize our emancipatory potential as nurses, critically examining our role in upholding oppressive structures is a critical step toward a more robust future of nursing.
KW - Emancipatory nursing
KW - Neoliberalism
KW - Nursing economics
KW - Nursing ethics
KW - Nursing politics
KW - Radical imagination
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85113136896&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1097/ANS.0000000000000361
DO - 10.1097/ANS.0000000000000361
M3 - Article
C2 - 33624989
AN - SCOPUS:85113136896
SN - 0161-9268
VL - 44
SP - 195
EP - 209
JO - Advances in Nursing Science
JF - Advances in Nursing Science
IS - 3
ER -