THE PROSPECT BEFORE YOU

Abstract

WHAT role are private duty nurses destined to play in the years ahead? Certainly there are few among us with sufficient wisdom to answer this question with any degree of assurance. For nursing itself is changing, as well as the roles of its individual practitioners. nursing is today and what it is becoming are the result of forces which have been molding it, particularly the momentous shifts taking place in other broad areas of change: technologic, socio-economic, scientific, educational, and political. In the years ahead we may no longer be dealing with the same social and economic conditions, the same set of scientific facts, the same demands for health care, the same standards of nursing practice and nursing education, or with the same patterns for providing nursing care. But whatever the future may hold, one certainty is that the goal of all professional nurses-regardless of their field of practice-will be to keep themselves equipped with the knowledge and the skills essential to perfect the art of nursing. A second sure element in the future is that vexing problems will continue to exist and that the destiny of private duty nurses, as of all groups of nurses, will be determined in part by the way they face and solve the problems created by a changing situation in nursing. The nurse is already keenly aware, for instance, that her role is becoming increasingly complex as the medical and social sciences advance. She knows, too, that the situation may call for greater resources in knowledge, skill, and personality than she has been able to attain through earlier professional education; many of our educational points of view and methods have been perpetuated with little change for a long, long time and are out of tune with the demands of the present. Perhaps never before in the history of nursing have nurses so urgently needed direct, immediate, and practical help. That help is available to them through education -and through education we can all move ahead. We can turn to education for help with an exciting awareness of the professional frontiers that still await our crossing-and with a discouraging awareness of the difficulties with which we often must contend in the day-by-day work situation: the bigness of the task of meeting nursing needs today, the inadequate ratios of nurses to patients, the confusions and perplexities which arise when many different types of personnel are contributing to patient care, the frequent lack of essential facilities and good employment conditions, and the rather slow development of happy interpersonal relationships in the hospital situation. These factors, however, should never be permitted to create an attitude of futility that might turn us aside from educational opportunities. Rather, they should cause us to turn quietly to education for further light and guidance with the questions once asked by Kant: What can I know? may I hope?