Creating Nursing's Virtuous Cycle: Scholarship

Thursday, 10 July 2008: 10:50 AM
Mansour Olawale Jumaa, DProf, RN, CMgr, FWACN, FCMI, MBA, MSc, (Econ) , Chief Emeka Anyaoku R & D Centre for Work Based Learning and Leading, L4T - Leadership For Today (UK) Ltd, Burgess Hill, United Kingdom

Learning Objective 1: Note that nursing scholarship cannot be separated from nursing’s contribution to practical patient-centred health and nursing care.

Learning Objective 2: Recognize the essence of political and business acumen to improve and integrate nursing academic and nursing practice infrastructures

At the heart of creating nursing's virtuous cycle of scholarship, action and innovation at the point of care, is immediate past STTI President, Carol Picard's belief of what nursing is, “caring in the human health experience, and that being leaders in caring requires us to live out the attributes of compassion, competence, confidence, conscience and commitment”.

Former past STTI President, Dan Pesut's called for renewal within our profession. It is time for us to look outward as the world's leading nursing and healthcare organization. Current STTI President, Carol Huston is taking forward ‘Vision 2020: The Guiding Force' which has four themes.

Two goals from the themes on Knowledge and Service are that, “the honor society will be the premier knowledge repository in professional nursing by 2020” and that “the honor society will be more openly engaged in service projects that further our mission”. These goals are the main rationale for this paper.

A successful nurse entrepreneur, Kenneth W. Dion, asserted that nurses are on the front lines. “From their unique bedside vantage point, where they deliver the lion's share of patient interventions, nurses can also recognize needs that may be opportunities for innovative products that improve patient care”.

This paper puts forward a tried and tested nursing framework based on the innovative Chartered Manager process in the United Kingdom (www.managers.org.uk ). The framework - Creating Nursing's Virtuous Cycle – supports Dion's assertions and advances Professor Kitson's argument in her paper, From scholarship to action and innovation.

The framework makes a case that nursing scholarship cannot be separated from nursing's contribution to practical patient-centred health and nursing care. It advocates for political and business acumen to improve and integrate academic and practice infrastructures. This way, STTI membership will grow, nursing scholarship, nursing practice and nursing innovation will flourish tangibly and globally.