| CONTACT - Volume 8, Number 1
Message from the Dean
 We recognize and accept the reality of the tension between the individual (me) and the community (them). This tension carries into our work. Do we work to get a higher position with a larger salary to benefit our emotional and financial needs? Or do we forgo some or all of these rewards in exchange fro the rewards of reaching out in meaningful ways to provide for the real needs of the larger community?
Work can contribute to our emotional, spiritual, and even physical well-being. We work at gainful employment to earn money to live. Most of us work to satisfy our need to learn and develop new skills, to be recognized, and to feel worthwhile. Many of us also work at fruitful employment because we care about our community. We want to contribute to something important, to promote the well-being of many, to be part of a larger purpose, to be involved in alleviating the plight of the unfortunate. All who work struggle with the tug between selfish monetary gains and the contribution to community interests and a shared purpose.
New students choose nursing for a number of reasons. It provides a reasonably secure and financially sound profession with unlimited job opportunities. Nursing also, and more importantly, allows for a contribution to the larger society. It makes life meaningful. It gets us out of our selfish, narrow ways and helps us look to the welfare of individuals and groups. The young students express this by saying that nursing fulfills their need to help others.
Students who come to our second-degree program are already experienced in the working world though not in nursing. Their choice of nursing as a profession is well considered and maturely made. Although a few choose a career change to nursing for its measure of job security, most come to our program to change their work from meaningless to meaningful, from narrow to broad, from selfish to more selfless.
The registered nurses who return to earn the BSN, MSN, and Ph.D. have had much experience working in nursing. They know first-hand that it is sometimes exasperating and exhausting, but that it is also rewarding. They come to expand their sphere of influence. They come to learn the skills needed to care for larger groups of patients, to make more far-reaching changes, to expand their caring to more compromised or diverse populations. They come to learn to create and disseminate nursing knowledge to influence improved care for many patients. The come to become more involved in the educational, administrative and political decision making that affects patient care in an entire agency, in Florida, or at a national level.
How very blessed we are to be able to work in nursing, a profession that provides adequate compensation and meaningful work. How blessed Barry is to provide a nursing education program that can lead others to meaningful work. How many women and men care for children or elderly parents at home, or volunteer in service agencies, certainly meaningful work, but are not compensated, and struggle to feel rewarded fro the wonderful work they do. How blessed are we in nursing to have the best of both worlds.
Judith Balcerski, Ph.D., RN |
