Archives
Editorial
Getting into Nursing
Recruiting for contemporary practice
Jane Conway
Manager, Organisational Education Learning and Development, Northern Sydney Central Coast Health; Conjoint Senior Lecturer and Consultant, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Newcastle, NSW
Margaret McMillan
Professor and Deputy Executive Dean, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, Newcastle NSW
Article Text
As identified by Johnstone in her Foreword, nursing needs to adopt a futurist lens when examining workforce matters. Inayatullah (2004) describes 'Futures thinking (theories, methods, tools and processes)' as having numerous uses:
- The provision of tools to understand the world and analyse the alternatives ahead of us
- The creation of strategy through the use of mapping exercises
- The provision of mechanisms for building capacity to thrive through adaptation to any one of a number of futures
- Taking us to the edge of the unknown in order to create new options for the future
- A means for transformative social innovation.
According to the International Council of Nurses (2006), there are five 'mutually connected and interrelated' areas to be addressed in response to the global nursing shortage:
- Macroeconomic and health sector funding policies;
- Workforce policy and planning, including regulation;
- Positive practice environments and organisational performance;
- Recruitment and retention; addressing in-country mal-distribution, and out-migration; and
- Nursing leadership.
The papers in this volume provide a snapshot of nursing's identification of issues related to these areas and describe some of the strategies that are being implemented to address recruitment and retention in nursing. We have structured the volume around three concepts: 'Getting In', 'Being In' and 'Staying In' the nursing workforce.
The papers in the first section of this volume address issues related to 'Getting In' to nursing. They highlight the challenges in appreciating nursing in all its facets, roles and functions; promoting realistic yet still attractive views of nursing; recruiting in competitive national and international labour markets and educating for both current and future practice.
Parker and McMillan begin by noting that nursing is part of a global community that, in theory, should be characterised as 'partnership and collaboration across disciplines and countries and with communities and industry.' The paper proceeds to identify the challenges inherent in recruiting across the globe including depleting workforces, imperialism, a lack of relativity and limited tolerance of different approaches to teaching, learning and practising nursing. The paper concludes with a set of key questions for consideration that should shape policy and protocols and highlight the complexities of international recruitment.
Parker and McMillan's work presents a broad brush overview of the issues inherent in a global nursing recruitment market and emphasise the need to acknowledge and respond to social, political, cultural, historical and economic contexts as integrated wholes both within and between countries.
On a less global scale, in a case study of 'socio-demographic and economic change', Birenbaum-Carmelli comments upon the interrelationships among society, labour markets and professional training in Israel. She takes a more holistic view of motivations for selecting nursing as a career than the individual motivation, to examine 'ties between the demand structure for the profession and broader socio-demographic and economic processes'. She nests recruitment into nursing within long standing and implicit cultural and ethnic norms, traditions and histories.
These two papers highlight the tensions among individual aspirations and opportunities for upward mobility as afforded by a career in nursing, and social need for nursing services and raise moral questions about recruitment into nursing. Questions related to efficiency versus equity and the impact of economic rationalism across countries and opportunities for coalescence funding and an increased awareness of the impact of paternalistic and patriotic managerialism should be resolved at international levels.
Amidst the backdrop of the challenges of globalisation and within national contexts, local initiatives to recruit nurses continue. There has been concerted effort in many countries on recruitment through promoting nursing to high school students. In their study of the perceptions of nursing by high school careers advisers, King, Hardie and Conway highlight the need to promote nursing to high school students yet question the extent to which the promotion of nursing as increasingly driven by a professional agenda has skewed careers' advisers perceptions of the knowledge, skills and attributes necessary for entry into the range of nursing careers. Additionally, there is limited public awareness of the subtleties, nuances and diversity of nursing work.
Walker argues that there are additional subtleties, nuances and diversity within the nursing workforce itself. He urges us to maximise organizational effectiveness by acknowledging and dealing with the differences between nurses of different generations. There is a need for sophisticated, employee friendly work and human resource practices to capitalise on the idealism of one generation and the pragmatism of another. He describes a strategy that that has been implemented in an undergraduate curriculum 'specifically tailored to the desires of a particular generational grouping'. His paper challenges us to reframe what many term 'the crisis of a nursing shortage 'as an opportunity to think differently about how to address 'the exigencies currently besieging the viability of our profession'. Walker's paper should cause those aspiring to a different future for nursing to question the dichotomy and apparent tension in espousing the professionalism of nursing while clinging to old worldviews.
In our view, it is clear that nurses need to elicit and make explicit the values underpinning the statements of contemporary identity and purpose for the profession. There is then a need to prioritize the contemporary issues and first identify the potential impact on the clientele they serve and then to consider the implications for a contemporary view of Nursing. There will be numerous issues, many of which have been identified by the authors who have contributed to this special volume of the journal. Many are also within the sphere of influence and action of members of the profession. Perhaps we could encourage more 'futures thinking' as a framework for analysis and review of what happens around us on a daily basis to facilitate responses to these and emerging issues.
References
Inayatullah S (2004) Why Futures Thinking accessed at www.metafuture.org/futures_thinking.htm on 20 February 2007.
International Council of Nurses (2006) Country overview report: International Council of Nurses Workforce Forum, Geneva, International Council of Nurses.
eContent Home