February 8, 2008
The authors have a great appreciation for the value of Nursing and Nurses. Nurses in all roles are equally valued by the authors. This includes, for example home care nurses, acute care nurses, long-term care nurses, school nurses, public health nurses, and nurses in education. We value nurses in whatever role they hold in a long career trajectory, including primary nurses, instructors, professors, research nurses, nurse administrators, nurse managers, Nurse Practitioners, Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS), nurse navigators, nurse care coordinators, and a variety of other roles. Because most nurses do have long careers, the roles they hold vary over time. Each role adds to their base of understanding of what it means to be a nurse and how nursing contributes to society. Nurses don't necessarily lose the perspective of prior experiences over time. If a nurse is a manager today and a staff nurse ten years from now, she will integrate her experience as a manager into her current role as a staff nurse. Although the authors of this article, who were developing this BSN to PhD fast track program, were currently in such roles as CNS, program nurse, dean, and Chief Nursing Officer, they had previously held other roles in nursing. So it is not valid to conclude that these nurses don't really know, or have not experienced nursing enough to talk and think about nursing and power. The fact that we didn't include the school nurse, research nurse, primary nurse or public health nurse, does not limit the knowledge generated in this paper, which is consistent with other findings in the literature review.
