Dealing with Controversy, Part I: Nursing Grows Up

Extract

At a small community hospital, nurses are concerned about what they believe to be questionable medical care of one of the patients. The nurses frequently discuss the matter among themselves, but none of them approaches the patient's attending physician or the hospital administration.

At a large university school of nursing, a faculty member vehemently disagrees with opinions expressed in an article published in a widely circulated nursing journal. The faculty member writes a one-sentence letter to the journal's editors, cancelling her subscription.

And at a conference on legal aspects of nursing, a speaker discusses the entry into practice issue, including, of course, the 1985 proposal. There is very little audience discussion of this issue, although ample time has been allotted. Yet the written conference evaluations, filled out by the attendees, reveal that many of the nurses in the audience reacted strongly to the content. “What does the 1985 proposal have to do with nursing and the law?” wrote one nurse. “The 1985 discussion ruined the whole conference for me,” wrote another.