INR: a global forum for nursing perspectives.

摘要

I was first licensed to practice nursing in 1968 and believe that I have a good perspective on the history of and changes in the nursing profession over the last 40 years. My nursing career has had three major foci: care of children (paediatrics always sounds so restrictive to me), teaching/educational administration, and international nursing and nursing development. It is the third area that I wish to discuss in this editorial.Nurses are in a unique position to observe, experience, and impact the 'human condition,' both collectively and individually. There is not any place in the world that nurses do not live and interface with people who need health care (along the continuum from promotion to rehabilitation or peaceful death). What fascinates me about nursing is that the form and the manner in which it is taught, practiced, imagined, and articulated varies from one place to another based on socio-economic, political and cultural factors. Nursing in Pakistan, for example, is very different from nursing in Australia. That is not to say that one is better than another, but that they have evolved differently based on their own unique national contexts. And, at the same time, there appears to be a core of nursing knowledge, skills, and values that transcends national boundaries. How the two sides of the equation are fit together creates the picture of nursing in any given society.