But what is wisdom..

What is the world all about? And how should we live within it?

Deep questions but we live in a serious world. How do we learn to be a good citizen?

How do we, as nurses, remember to be “good nursing citizens”?

This is leading to a concept that has been churning through my echo chamber lately.

As a nurse, what is wisdom?, are we offering it, are you chasing it, is that realistic?

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WHAT IS A GOOD NURSE?

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Wisdom is not a word I cross paths with in the Nursing profession very often. To be wise. What does that even mean? Is it the role of academia to teach and integrate learning into nursing to create "wisdom"? ?It doesn’t feel like that? Do they deal in authentic learning, deep learning, active learning, again whatever they mean to you or I, they just seem to present more questions.

Or is it our role as individuals to build an ultimate goal towards wisdom in the profession? To be democratic around the dispersion of ideas and motivation. What would you aim for? Whatever you could! that could be the best idea, but I can only suppose?

That is where my nursing career began; I wanted to be a good nurse. Whatever that means.

So many questions,

because what is a good nurse and are they wise to the world within nursing?

Perhaps we should aim to master our practice, incorporate quality into our day-to-day and pull our best efforts into our work. Situate ourselves in history properly, not floating in a void, individually divorced from meaning. Everybody knows someone who has “tapped out” just turning up to work and going home. Non-commitment in healthcare raises a weird spectre of doubt because this then makes the application to the end task futile. The actual decision, that is played out to the team in reality, is not to adopt the responsibility, to rationalize, that ultimately, the work being conducted is meaningless.

To take on meaning, it is then probably best to take on responsibility. The way to take on responsibility is to identify a goal; what better way to drive a positive emotion in yourself or a team member but to instil drive and an actionable purpose through responsibility. If you do not have a goal that you intrinsically value, then you have no meaning in your approach. No doubt, responsibility can take a heavy toll, a higher price than expected. If anything, I can vouch for that. It can break you.

In summary, is a sense of meaning in the profession, proportionate to the amount of responsibility you take on? Once we create meaning, we could aim to build experience, knowledge, and sound judgment; the three pillars of wisdom!

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As you know I created Bundle of Rays which I am proud to say is not a trade school, and we are 100% not a box-ticking exercise for compliance. We are an education provider seeking to ensure we deliver value and that we support nurses to be good nurses, whatever that means to them. Our responsibility is to help them draw out goals and adopt responsibility because we see that provides meaning.

Are you grasping at the cloud of a mythological fantasy that excellence is in every single day to day exchange? Hopefully, you are not floating in the void, weak and devoid and divorced from everything professional; just turning up and going home, that narrative just reads like a story gone wrong. We want to help draw out goals, not big ones, not world dominating goals, just goals that are higher than what they were yesterday.

How do you build meaning into your work or your team?

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