1st Global Conference
Sunday 20th March – Tuesday 22nd March 2011
Prague, Czech Republic
Spirit Stories: Developing Holistic Intelligence in Nursing
Cathy L. Jaynes
University of Colorado Denver, USA
Never have the challenges facing nurses been greater, or the landscape in which they work so complex. A bewildering depth and breadth of knowledge is essential to competent caring and healing as nurses find themselves in holy spaces during sacred transitions in the lives of their patients and families. Often, much of nursing practice literature has reduced the complex range of skills and knowledge to what Carper (1978) termed empirical or scientific knowing, while the limited number of hours available to prepare students for nursing practice necessitates a focus on those things that can be scientifically and objectively known, those things that can be learned, measured and tested.
The practice of nursing, however, extends beyond the empirical to the capacity for nurses to question openly, reflect honestly, seek their own truth and discover what it is to see with the eye of the heart and spirit as well as the eye of the mind (Palmer, 1993). Research using Watson’s conceptual model of caring-healing transpersonal understanding of nursing has described, through stories, the spiritual experiences of nurse healers who “walk in two worlds” (Helmsley, Glass, & Watson, 2006; Watson, 2005). Nursing practice invites the use of all ways of knowing; the aesthetic, ethical, and personal, as well as the empirical, in order to progress from novice to expert in patient care (Benner, 1984) and experience the inner dimensions of spirituality in healing. Stories of connection, meaning and transcendence enable nurses to strengthen the capacity for authentic presence through emotional and spiritual intelligence as they care for patient and self. This paper explores the use of stories as an integral part of reflective, experiential learning in a community of practice.
Spirituality in Nursing Care: Correcting the Imbalance
Rick Ferret
Avondale College, NSW, Australia
Early in the third millennium, the world is focusing more intensely on spiritual traditions and philosophies for understanding and direction. The nursing community has not been immune from such endeavours and is experiencing a renaissance of interest in holistic health and practice in order to provide appropriate care. The nursing profession today is predominantly aligned with business and scientific models often deemed incompatible with notions of spirituality and as such have contributed to the ongoing demise of patient spiritual care. Despite a great deal of academic rigor and professional emphasis in raising the profile of spirituality in nursing care, many nurses continue to feel inadequate in relation to the basic skills required when responding to the spiritual needs of their patients.
This paper seeks to address these issues by highlighting the challenges that increasing technology, scientific innovation, and medicalization exerts on nursing care. The relationship between spirituality and nursing care will also be explored and basic skills and assessments identified that can be employed in the application of spiritual care. It is the author’s hope that nursing care practice might be further enhanced by such an endeavour.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Policing And Spirituality: Their Impact On Brain Integration And Consciousness
Frederick Travis, Ginger Charles, Jonathan Smith
Graduate School Chair, Maharishi Vedic Science, Fairfield, Iowa USA, City of Arvada, Colorado Police Department, USA and Ashcroft International Business School, Cambridge, UK
Operational Policing is a challenging, demanding occupation and as Smith and Charles (2010) identify, the many toxic experiences police encounter in the course of their duty can erode their inner spirit.
Most police officers, however, are extremely resilient and demonstrate high levels of self-control, compassion, professionalism and love for the work they do. Their dedication to service is for many inspiring, revealing some of the noblest acts of self-sacrifice and altruism. These officers appear to have an ability to transform negative experiences, redirect their emotionally charged frustrations and move from feelings of victimization to using the experience to create new meaning and compassion.
This paper will detail what our research over that past 10 years shows the learning police officers and those in other professions and leaders more broadly can gain from these resilient officers and what can be done to ensure people are fully fit for the roles they have to perform.
The presentation will go on to detail recent research findings from some work with eleven officers who serve in five different policing agencies in Colorado. These eleven officers were volunteers from a larger group of research participants who were police officers from the United States and the United Kingdom.
In this recent research three forms of data were collected – in-depth interviews, brain function using an EEG during computer tasks to measure levels of brain integration, and a paper and pencil test that measured beliefs about consciousness and reality.
Although further research is required, these research findings may suggest that adopting strategies that nurture a deep spiritual foundation in individual officers may be of assistance in helping the officer to deal effectively with the toxic nature of police work. Based on the data, we will discuss factors that may have contributed to these findings.
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