By Jeannine Moreau, RN, MN, PhD (c)
Dorothy Kergin is special to me as my first UVic School of Nursing Director when I was hired in 1989. Her bursary well reflects her generous spirit. I am very appreciative for the UVic School of Nursing providing me a Dorothy Kergin bursary in support of my participation at the “Philosophy in the Nurses’ World” conference in Banff, Alberta, May 13th to 15th 2012.
This biennial conference is an Institute for Philosophical Nursing Research (IPNR) initiative offered to provide leadership in the pursuit of philosophical nursing knowledge. The IPNR was established in 1988 in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta. This year, 2012, the conference focused on “the political” in nursing with a call to put philosophy in action in nursing practice by responding to this question: What is the difference that philosophy makes to practice? This was an invitation to critically reflect on the givens and assumptions in everyday nursing practice for purposes of gaining deeper understanding of the human condition in relation to the multi-faceted complexities of nursing practice.
There were five conference streams: standardization; technological practice; politics of knowledge; effects of managerialism; and shifting boundaries. To give a flavor of the presentations here are some examples: (1) “Technologies of/in practice” critiques of techniques of practice, e.g., “Safe practice as a technique of control”; (2) “Structural marginalization”, e.g., “politics of nursing the Other”; (3) Politicizing nursing theory, e.g., “democratic dialogue/actualizing political theorizing”; (4) “Theorizing nursing/knowledge”; (5) “Governing practices” e.g., “Beyond the values of state policy”; (6) “Educative rationalities”, e.g., “performance and politics of practice for new grads”; (7) “Body politics, e.g., “Losing touch in nursing”.
I recommend this conference as a way to more deeply understand what is nursing in all its complexities and how what we value and believe is crucial to how we practice nursing. The conference was provocative from the first to the last presentation and keynote speaker. I feel privileged to have been able to attend such a wonderful thought provoking informative conference. The first keynote aimed to make it compelling for nurses to reflect on the importance of “parrhesia” in nursing, i.e., to tell the truth at the risk of danger (Foucault*). The speaker gave stimulating examples of how nurses engaging parrhesia can not only be productive for emancipation and political change but also effectively promote nurses as free and fearless speakers. She warned of the dangers of speaking up and speaking out but in the context of the rewards, setting an evocative tone of risk taking for the next days. The final keynote book ended the conference with an equally intriguing talk about desire titled: “Desiring productivity: nary a wasted moment, never a missed step!”
She unpacked how in health care systems the desire to measure productivity is a powerful driver, impacting the actual production and structure of nursing in
subtle and not so subtle ways; often with unintended consequences that can lead to nurses’ feeling ineffective and uncertain.
What struck me is how a group of nurses can at first glance seem homogenous with such strong common interests. This was a fleeting notion as I took in diverse
fascinating presentations and met and talked with so many different, dynamic and passionate nurses who offered an amazing number of unique angles about what is/can be nursing.
The paradox of diversity within homogeneity
My own presentation “Discourses of functional decline: An exemplary of the politics of knowledge” offered a kaleidoscope of images of older adults to provoke
thinking about how hospitalized older adults are positioned and represented. In particular how this population is taken up in political ways, e.g., through
categorization for efficiencies in care that can lead to stereotyping, making invisible their unique sense of personhood. My final slide is an image that reflects my own thinking about aging and how if you live long enough you become one of ‘them’. Gerontology is about all of us.
In many ways by participating in this conference I gained knowledge and insight that will both enrich my PhD studies and my practice as nurse educator. Thank you again for the support of the Dorothy Kergin bursary.
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Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia: 6 lectures given by Michel Foucault at the University of California at Berkeley, Oct-Nov. 1983
http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en.html
From the 2013 Fall Communiqué — History of Nursing
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