The yearning to maintain the attitudes of caring in the health professions
Today, more than ever, it is important to maintain the attitudes of respect, acceptance, caring, and compassion for the other. Those humanistic attitudes that Carl Rogers (1951) and Abraham Maslow (1968) described back in the 1960s. In the busyness of the modern world some of us have lost our individuality and the essence of who we are.
Technology and the increasing dependence on computers and mobile phones have changed the way we think and behave. Friends no longer drop in to say “Hello”. Instead, they send a text message.
Colleagues sitting next to each other do not talk but send email messages to each other. When we phone for an inquiry we no longer speak to a person, but to a machine. It is said that the world of technology has brought us closer but it has also made us impersonal and distant.
The pressures of our profit-driven world have caused society to be in survival mode and this can evoke the behaviors of self-protection, ego-centrism and distrust. Instead of opening up to others we tend to close up developing what as early as 1971, Jourard describes as a “protective armor” against the expression of feelings.
Yet there is an expectation that health professionals such as nurses and aged care workers already possess interpersonal skills or that these can be cultivated through training and experiences.
Students enroll in nursing have very little time to talk to patients or to each other. Machines are now used to perform functions such monitoring vital signs and recording handovers. These machines have reduced the nurses’ workload, but have also distanced the nursing care.
As Kleiman (2009) points, out technological advancements have played a role in dehumanizing nursing care as the following reflection from a nurse demonstrates:
I think that my nursing care function is being stretched to a level where you cannot see the patient, only the computer screen and all the red and green lights around him. The sound that beckons is not the scared voice of old Mr. John Doe but the alarm on the machine that quickens my step. . . (Kleiman, 2009, p.142).
This example taken from an acute-care setting shows the nurse’s yearning for a personal connection with the patient rather than merely responding to the equipment to which he is attached.
By going back to the “classics”, we can recognize that while Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow might have presented their views more than half a century ago, these views are even more relevant today than they were at that time.
REFERENCES
Jourard, S. M. (1971). The transparent self (Revised Ed.). New York, NY, USA: Van Nostrand Company.
Kleiman, S. (2009). Human Centred Nursing. The foundation of quality care. Philadelphia. P.A. USA: F. A. Davis Company.
Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company Inc.
Rogers, C. R. (1951). Client-centred therapy. London, UK: Burn Ltd.