Contributor – Faith A. Tissot RN, CCRN, MSN-Ed,
PhD student TWU

Diaphoresis, heart pounding, most likely over 120bpm, vertigo, respirations labored and rapid, and feelings of fight or flight apparent endocrine activation present. I can feel your brilliance and rapid fire ensuing in the immediate diagnosis of this patient. Interestingly enough, this is not a patient to diagnose. This was my experience during clinical rotations with not all but most of my nursing professors from 1992-1994 while navigating undergraduate nursing school. If you went to a nursing school like mine, I suspect you felt this way, too. Fear was part of the curriculum. If you were not afraid of the professors who displayed and wielded their power to fail you for less than perfection, which meant expulsion from the program, you were among the minority. One of the most feared professors, who wore her power over students like a badge of honor, left the body of an unwell older relative after they passed during the night untouched from their place of passing.  She reasoned that she needed to receive our class for our clinical rotation at 7 am. She would be home after 4 pm and would deal with it then. She had an elementary school-aged child living at home. Humanity left the building! Our cohort was aghast in horror.

We had a precious few who did not abuse their power. The cherished few were the ones I learned the most from. Their gentleness, while displaying their power in knowledge and skill, are the ones thirty-two years after graduation. I remember them with the utmost respect and love and have crafted skills to form my evolving skill set. These professors taught students HOW to be nurses. How to perform a skill while demonstrating the discipline of nursing, holding a dying patient’s hand while they took their last breaths, how to comfort a family member of a patient, as well as many other immeasurable empathetic aptitudes it takes to nurse another human being.

 What toll did the fear take on nursing students? How much better would we have been as nurses if the entire program had prided itself on a 99% graduation rate in compassion and empathy rather than a 99% first-time passing score on NY State Boards?

 Were my professors paying forward what they believed was necessary to persistently stay focused on becoming a perfected nurse? Were they exposed to nursing theorists who expressed nursing as a discipline and needed direction in modeling the concept? The experience of nursing professors who exerted fear lacked not humanity- but clarity. 

 Chinn & Falk-Rapfael (2018) superbly and concisely state that teachers who are nurses pave the way for their students by being exemplars of knowledge and skill; their rapport with their students would be duty-bound to encourage wellness and health. Their Critical Caring Pedagogy speaks to this dilemma. The model is interwoven with three theories within nursing to form one tapestry that is an inclusive and multi-faceted approach for nursing educators and students to map success, proficiency, and excellence in nursing care delivery. Grounded in a nursing framework that focuses on ontology, praxis, and epistemology. The three elements of the model are critical caring theories, philosophy of caring education and teaching strategies, and the inspection of peace and power theory that maps learning interactions. Critical Caring Pedagogy comes to life in a nursing educator-student interaction both in the academic and clinical setting as mutual respect for one another’s lived experience, unbiased instruction, assessing the needs of each student’s learning experience as well as the goal for the nursing educator is for their ability to blossom and evolve in their educational journey or have the comfort to choose that a career in nursing does not align with them.

Dr. Jean Watson (2021) guides her philosophies of Caring Science as Sacred Science (2021). We are reminded to stay dedicated to healing. Relationships based on healing can be extremely personal and leave a lasting impression. The intentional role of remaining and exuding humanity is our road map to becoming more humane. This knowingness serves to illuminate our knowledge that a patient is not just an identification number to be scanned for medication or treatment. Nor is a nursing educator-student a relationship lacking substance and authenticity. All persons involved are human beings with human needs. Nursing educators have the unique task of teaching students not just to use their senses but how to trust their senses of seeing, listening, and knowing each of their patient experiences to form an interconnectedness that guides their decisions for individual care.

Blossoming, thriving, evolving educators and students who grow in vital knowledge and skills and immeasurable proficiencies such as humanity, mutual respect, compassion, kindness, and gentleness. Learning safe patient care is paramount and crucial in the evolution of a nurse from their first nursing lecture to an RN graduate. Learning is not unidirectional. A Nursing educator will learn from their students as well. Being open to experiencing the highs and lows together as a team can be the difference between being an educator who is held in high esteem for their humanistic qualities and all they had to offer as a teacher, and who is remembered for being feared.

References

Chinn, P. L., & Falk-Rafael, A. (2018). Embracing the focus of the discipline of nursing: Critical Caring Pedagogy. Journal of nursing scholarship : an official publication of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing, 50(6), 687–694. https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12426

Watson, Jean S. (2021). Caring Science as Sacred Science. Lotus Library.

Acknowledgement

 I want to extend my profound gratitude to Dr. Peggy Chinn for her invaluable insights, expert critique, and invaluable assistance that significantly enhanced this submission. I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Wyona Freysteinson for her unwavering guidance, tutelage, and expertise in the field of publication. Moreover, I am exceedingly grateful to Dr. Jean Watson for her graciousness and generosity in sharing her profound knowledge. I humbly acknowledge that I owe a great debt to these esteemed nursing icons and pioneers of their nursing theories and scholarship. 

About Faith A. Tissot
ORCH-iD: 0009-0005-2595-5895

I first became a nurse when I graduated from high school. As a newly minted LPN, I began my journey towards becoming an RN. I graduated from Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York, and Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York, 2004 with a Dual Degree in BSN, MSN-Ed program. My clinical background in nursing includes various nursing specialties, such as medical-surgical nursing, Hemodialysis, PACU, and Surgical Intensive Care. I discovered my passion is cardiac critical care, which inspired me to earn my CCRN certification. I am pursuing a Doctorate in Philosophy of Nursing Science at the Nelda Stark School of Nursing at Texas Women’s University, Houston, Texas. Having a personal history within the foster care system, I plan to focus my research study on the incidence of inflammatory disease in adult survivors of childhood maltreatment.