Nursing Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Nursing, including details on health care, hospital staff, professional care.

Teaching the abyss: living the art-science of nursing.

Ramey SL, Bunkers SS

Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

This column addresses how nurse educators can provide the teaching-learning experiences for novice nurses to develop the leadership competence to effectively practice nursing in an extremely demanding healthcare environment. The authors delve into Mitchell and Bunkers' use of the metaphor of an abyss to explore the lived experience of risking being with others in extremely intense interpersonal situations. Using reflection, students' journal narratives affirm connections made among past experiences and the new knowledge gleaned from exploring and naming the phenomenon of the abyss. Several teaching-learning strategies are offered as ways for addressing the leadership issues related to dealing with intense relational experiences in nursing practice, including exploring nurse theorist Rosemarie Rizzo Parse's essentials of leadership.

Published 19 September 2006 in Nurs Sci Q, 19(4): 311-5.
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