Contributor: Aisha Chahal, MSN, CMSRN

Culture shock is a state where people experience the stages of honeymoon, frustration, adaptation and acceptance. It is an intense feeling that follows the grief process. I had first-hand experience with all these stages of culture shock when I came to the land of opportunities, the United States of America, in 2012. I started my first job as a bedside Registered Nurse. It felt like I had accomplished the purpose of my life by getting a job at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Yale seemed like a place in heaven. It was beautiful to see that people could order food over the phone and a beautiful tray with fancy food items arrive at the bedside within a few minutes. Nurses only had four to five patients instead of the thirty that I had cared for earlier in my career. Patients had call bells and people responded to those bells. There were computers, scanners, medication dispensing machines and robots to deliver supplies. I was in the honeymoon phase.

But then came frustration as food items were thrown away if patients did not like them. Computers took away my time to be with my patients. The machines, robots, and technology had turned people into objects. I barely had time to know my patients or colleagues on a personal level. But I adapted and accepted by learning to fit into the situation. I learned that all this was crucial for patient safety, evidence-based practice, patient satisfaction scores and reimbursements.

After 8 years, I relived the stages of culture shock while learning in-depth about nursing theories in my doctorate program and educating nursing students on nursing theories at the same time. Nursing theories fascinated me and sparked my interest to learn more about the focus and identity of nursing discipline. Learning new concepts, making connections, discussing with nurse educators and colleagues, listening to some of the theorists themselves send me into the honeymoon phase once again.

I was determined to start my clinical day with the students by discussing a nursing theory. With all enthusiasm, I showed up at 6.45 am to meet my students and talk about nursing theories starting with Florence Nightingales’ framework and Watson’s Caring theory before we see our patients. Then once again, I experienced the frustration phase as students were disinterested, inattentive, unpassionate, and incurious which was exactly the opposite of what I was prepared for. I stopped the talk in the middle and let them start their routine patient assessments. I was deeply saddened by reliving the experience as I knew that I would have to adapt and accept the reality just like I did a few years back.

But this time, instead of accepting, I felt challenged to change the norm. Students viewed the content of nursing theories as dry, complicated to understand, of no practical use, and grade-lowering. The next week, I planned to discuss Neumann’s System Model with the vision that students can feel and experience the essence of the theory and view clients as an open system responding to various stressors in the environment. Instead of theory, I started our discussion with the theorist, Betty Neumann. We discussed how she grew up on a farm and took care of her sick father who died at the age of 36, which created her passion for nursing. Her mother was a devoted self-taught midwife. We talked about her academic, professional, and volunteer work. I shared images and videos depicting her life and vision. Then we discussed her vision of creating the nursing theory and related concepts of the theory.

Students were completely engaged, asked questions, and seemed ready to minimize the theory-practice gap. In the post- clinical conference that day, students were able to identify intra, inter and extra-personal stressors for their clients. They also identified the interventions they performed or planned to perform at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of prevention. They developed a deeper connection to the theorist, theory, clients and themselves. They identified who they are in relation to the focus of nursing discipline. After that week, we continued discussing a theorist and a nursing theory each week before clinical and each student-patient interaction is now guided by the concepts of that theory. Every week, we now look forward to our discussion of nursing theories and viewing people from different perspectives to provide competent and compassionate nursing care

I invite all the nursing students, nurse educators, nurse scholars, and nurse researchers to prevent nursing theories from following the similar pattern of stages of culture shock and grief. Instead of frustration, anger, denial, adaptation, and acceptance, our collaborative efforts can lead to a focused nursing discipline in which every nurse is changing lives by using the strong foundational pillars of nursing theories.

About Aisha Chahal

Aisha Chahal, MSN, CMSRN, is a doctoral nursing student in the Online Nursing Education EdD program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Aisha has completed her Masters of Science in Nursing Education in 2019. She is a clinical instructor at Western Connecticut State University. She has have 10 years of clinical experience in medical-surgical nursing. Her passion is exploring effective teaching-learning strategies to educate nursing students on Transcultural Nursing.