“’Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.” ~ Alice Walker.

One of the first things I learned, once I began teaching nursing students, was how much I had to relearn.  The temptation, especially after having been a nurse for 30 years, was to think that I already knew it all.  And yet I soon realized that I had forgotten much, and had developed many bad habits along the way.  So before teaching any skill, or lecturing on any concept, I had to go back to basics and review the steps and understand the theory behind why things were done a certain way, before I could safely and competently demonstrate ‘the right way’ to do things.

My original nursing education was in a UK hospital-based program, where the emphasis was heavy on hands-on learning.  We spent most of our time on the wards, working alongside senior nursing students and qualified nurses (Staff Nurses and Sisters, in the English way), with less time in a classroom setting.  Some of the lessons we learned were negative ones.  Many years later I used the infamous Sister Parry as my model for what not to do.

Sister Parry was near the end of her nursing career when I met her, on my first nursing ward assignment as a not quite nineteen-year-old fresh-faced nursing student. I was still of the mindset that nursing involved holding my soothing hand on some patient’s forehead, healing them with my presence.  The reality was quite different.  The term ‘evidence-based practice’ had not yet been coined.  We did things because that was the way we had always done them.  Or, on Sister Parry’s GYN ward, we did them the way she said to do them.  You have to picture her: a lady in her sixties, with iron grey hair, her nurse’s cap perched high on her head, steely eyes peering over her half-moon glasses.  I don’t recall ever seeing her smile.  Anyway, she believed the post-operative patients should be kept in bed for a good three days after surgery.  I don’t know why she believed that.  She also kept patients who had undergone a ‘cone biopsy’ (an outpatient procedure today) in bed for 48 hours post-op. 

Anyone who is a nurse today, or who has undergone surgery, will know that bed rest is a death sentence after most surgeries.  The risk of contracting the most common complications of surgery is greatly increased by inactivity, by bed rest.  But, as previously stated, the term ‘evidence-based’ had not been coined, and the Ward Sisters were allowed to implement whatever practices they thought worked.  Fortunately for the patients on G2 ward, there was a ‘Junior Sister’, a cheerful, no nonsense woman who, on Sister Parry’s days off, had us get all of the patients out of bed, walking, taking deep breaths, and avoiding those deadly complications.  It was our secret! ‘Don’t tell Sister Parry’, the Junior Sister would wink, as we bullied our patients into good health.

It is distressing when you read of evidence-based practice in other disciplines being ignored or overruled.  In education, for example, you can read of great progress being made in countries where homework is abolished, where kids are being encouraged to learn through play, and to spend their evenings doing things other than the same schoolwork they have just been poring over in classrooms all day.  And yet you find your kids and grandkids coming home with hours more homework every evening. 

The same thing is true of sociology.  There are wonderful studies about effective ways to reduce violence in communities.  These studies have led to programs such as the Peacekeepers Program in Chicago, and Safe Streets in Baltimore being implemented, in order to address problems of gun violence with early interventions.  I first learned the term ‘upstream solutions’ when I went back to nursing school in my fifties, to learn all that I did not know about nursing despite my 30-year career.  For those who may not have heard it before, picture this.  You are standing at the side of a river watching people being carried away, struggling in the rushing water. You dive in and drag out as many as you can, meanwhile your companion heads in the opposite direction.  ‘Where are you going?’ you yell, ‘I need help here!’.  Your companion yells back: ‘I’m going upstream to stop whoever keeps throwing them in the water!’

So long as we try to fix problems by only treating what is in front of our eyes, we will never be successful.  But if we research the ‘root causes’ of such things as gun violence and crime, and then address those root causes, we will have a better chance of success.

It is indeed disturbing when current health policies are being driven by people who, like Sister Parry, think that their own opinions matter more than solid scientific research and evidence-based practice.  It is beyond disturbing to live in a society now patrolled by heavily armed military personnel.  It is deeply distressing to live in a society where, once again, young children pay the price for living in a country where guns outnumber people.  And where books are banned, but ‘open carry’ is permitted.

Unfortunately, the policies currently being implemented are not based on science, or on research.  Across the country, programs proven effective have had their budgets slashed, personnel being told their services are no longer needed.  Depending on where we get our news sources, where we obtain our information, we may or may not be aware of the significant brain drain the country is experiencing, as universities are losing funding, and those who would spearhead promising and innovative solutions and cures are being attracted to other countries. 

There are so many things to be shocked by, on a daily basis, that we are running the risk once more of becoming numb to the way the country has changed over the past six months.  So many norms have been broken, so much is done in plain sight that corruption has been normalized; firing top people through a social media post is nothing new; throwing red carpet welcomes for War Criminals is just another Friday; snatching people off the streets and sending them to third countries without due process? More of the same.

And yet we must stand for something! It wasn’t so long ago that we could be proud to live in a country where speech felt free, where universities were places of open discussion and debate about vastly different points of view, where it felt safe to join a peaceful protest.  We must not lose sight of the ideals of the USA, a country built on and improved by diversity, a nation that is made richer when it includes all of the people it represents, where anyone can succeed and realize their dreams.  We have to be prepared to defend these values, even as we see them being eroded.

On this Friday morning, I give thanks to all of those people who do the research to provide us with evidence-based solutions; I applaud all of those who are willing to lose their jobs, their livelihoods rather than implement policies which endanger lives; and I hope that we will soon return to a day when science is respected; when experts are listened to; when we stop throwing people in the river.

Have a wonderful weekend, Family! And to those in CC nation who are coming to South Florida this weekend, let’s get the party started!

One Love!

Namaste.