Reflection

We had a speaker this morning who spoke on "reflection." She went into the etymology, from its Latin roots "reflexio," and said that it comes from a word meaning "bending back" or "a wave motion or energy." She then cited some authors who have written about reflection, including Dewey, Shon, Johns and Socrates. At the end the speaker tearfully reflected upon her own mother's teachings at age 2:

• Arrive with a flare
• "Can't" doesn't exist
• Take a fried along (not misspelled)
• Ask for a push
• Swing higher
• Reach for the clouds
• Feel the music
• Use your imagination
• Laugh/play/learn

Nice advice. But..."tearfully?" Therein lies my problem in nursing. Too many women. Would a major player (man) in medicine or law or business give an address to over 1,000 attendees tearfully? I think not. In reflecting, I think that nursing is where it is because it is run by women. Every so often I say it outloud to my colleagues, and I get grief. But would legislators ask men to lower the standards of their faculty? They do it all the time to nurses. In Florida, for example, the legislators took the Board of Nursing out of regulating nursing education, and the legislators (mostly men and certainly non-nurses) are regulating nursing programs. Do you know what their required faculty qualifications are? 50% need a master's in nursing. That's it. What about the other 50%, you ask? There are no qualifications for them! So, in a Florida nursing program, you could have a faculty member who also flipped hamburgers. What is nursing doing about it? Absolutely nothing. Why? I think it's because we are women. Let me ask you: What if this were medicine? Or if it were a profession that has a larger percentage of men?

I am sorry to be disparaging to my own gender, but we must learn to step up to the plate, like men have. It is embarrassing sometimes.

By the way, do not get sick in Florida!