Categories: nursing
Tags: health visiting
Date: 13 January 2006 19:45:43
Yesterday's seminar was really interesting and really depressing in equal measure. Interesting in that it was put on by the school of Social Work and was aimed as much at practitioners as academics, and it looked at theory (specifically postmodern and feminist ethics as opposed to the dominant rational model) as a tool for improving care - there was a lot which, as a health visitor, I could mull over and be challenged by and think about how I could apply this to my own practice. And interesting the amount of really intelligent debate from the floor (of mostly practising social workers rather than academics). Depressing in that, compared to the standard of debate going on in health visiting (and arguably nursing more widely) it was so far ahead of us that I felt quite despairing - our professional association has already proved itself weak and more interested in being subsumed by amicus than representing its members' professional interests, and to be honest the standard of lecturers I had when I trained was nowhere near this good. Also depressing was that, following the very robust discussions afterwards by the audience members, I couldn't help but reflect on the standard of discussion had the lecture been given to a large number of health visitors I've worked with over the years - in similar(ish) situations previously I've been genuinely embarrassed by some of my colleagues. That's one of the few "if onlys" and "what ifs" that I don't lose sleep over - I very seriously considered going into social work instead of nursing, and I do occasionally wonder how things would have turned out. As I said, I'm not losing sleep over it, and I'm sure it would have given me just as many irritations to blog about, but it does make me stop and think "hmmm" in a stroky chin sort of way sometimes.