NR 390 Week 8 Discussion, AACN BSN Essential VIII and Your Future Practice

Week 8 Discussion Topic NR 393 AACN BSN Essential VIII clearly calls for BSN graduates to appreciate nursing history and its impact on today's professional nursing practice. As you consider your future professional nursing practice, tell us • how you will share stories and lessons from nursing history with your nursing colleagues; and • how lessons from nursing history will impact your own future nursing practice. Dear Professor and Class, During this 8-week course, I have learned a lot about the journey of nursing and how many resources that we still use today, blossomed from nurses from the past. How the idea as important as cleanliness to reduce mortality rates started way back by Florence Nightingale. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the baccalaureate program “prepares the graduate nurse to demonstrate an appreciation of the history of and contemporary issues in nursing and their impact on current nursing practice” (AACN, pg. 29). With the knowledge that I have gathered from the lessons in this course, I will encourage my fellow co-workers who are also taking courses towards their BSN to take a nursing history class, to read up on the history and the path of nursing from past to present. This class proved very enlightening in regards to the determination of nurses’ past, through derogatory and degrading views, and ending with what we have today which is one of the most respected professions except to the Washington State Senator but that is a different issue. For myself, I will utilize what I have learned by reviewing more evidence-based practices in order to continue to educate myself and expand my practice, because new knowledge is being developed everyday through research studies that supersedes practices utilized presently. Judd & Sitzman wrote “We have a great opportunity as we step into the future to create the image we desire as we reinforce that nursing is both an art and a science based on acquired evidence, nursing theory, and evolving research” and with acquiring our bachelors degrees, we should be proud to be the nurses we are and our impact on history by the patients we take care for, so they can create history of their own (Judd & Sitzman, pg. 303). I enjoyed taking this course with all of you and wish you all the best in your careers… go make some history! References: American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2008). The essentials of baccalaureate education for professional nursing practice. Retrieved from Judd, D., & Sitzman, K. (2014). A history of American nursing: Trends and eras (2nd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett.