Job aids are resources made available to individual, allowing them to enhance their performance via education and sponsorship. They can come in many forms, and provide very different means of assistance. The idea in this essay is to create an ongoing podcast that would further the ideas of Caring Science and educate individuals on the practices of healing and caring in nursing. In it, experts from various ends of the caring-healing practice spectrum would come together and provide new insights and developments in the field every week. It would also bring in special guests and new strategies for caring practices with every episode, in order to further educate its listeners.
The podcast format is perfect for this particular type of job aid – the serialized and recurring nature of it would keep concepts fresh in people’s minds, and new content could be disseminated to its listeners within a week of the discovery or innovation. This sort of method has been employed before by health care professionals to disseminate information and provide clinical guidance; it is probable that it could be of assistance in the caring services field as well. (Noticeboard, 2010) The vast majority of the content would be derived from Jean Watson’s theory of transpersonal care, which includes a spiritual element to nursing, and involves the overall happiness of the patient as opposed to just the external health problem. (Walker, 1996) Perhaps Watson herself would be amenable to providing content for the podcast; if not, other experts in the same field could be found.
Jean Watson’s caring theory revolves around the concepts of providing a deeper connection between people as an avenue for healing. (Suliman et al., 2002) Also, there is an art and humanities component to caring science, meaning that connecting life can happen through music, performance, art, etc. (“Caring Science Defined,” 2011) Each new method of performing inquiries into caring science could be explored in this podcast – one episode could be on personal “ways of knowing,” another can explore spirituality, and so on. This regiments the content of the job aid, and thus offers an organized resource for nurses and other health care professionals to use as needed.
The ethical framework by which caring theory is implemented can be discussed and explored by the interviews and conversations that are conducted in these podcasts. (“Implications of Caring Theory”, 2011) The episodic nature of the podcast also allows the entirety of the listening community to weigh in; they can offer their questions to the hosts or the experts that will be participating in upcoming episodes, and their own questions can be answered in that next installment. It all leads up to a constantly evolving, growing and changing repository of information that can stay current and add new information.
The audience would be required to tune in week after week, and there could be plenty of interactive elements besides the question submissions. The spiritual and calming elements of caring theory are important enough that guided meditation can be a recurring segment of the podcast. This brings the mind of the listener into a receptive mindset for the content of the podcast, and they are also more receptive to what it has to say. The guided meditation also serves as an instant aid for the listener, calming them and bringing them to a good center for their work. This has the effect of providing them immediate visceral benefits that will help them in the course of their care administration.
It would be easy to disseminate the job aid podcast – simply set it up online via iTunes or some other online service and advise the nurses in respective community nursing programs to subscribe to it. There could even be group listening sessions to facilitate discussion between the nurses within your group, allowing for greater communication of the concepts.
All of these components would lead to a better understanding of the processes necessary to offer better care and greater caring between individuals, and between nurse and patient. The result is a constantly updating, constantly informative, and immediately beneficial package that could continue to build on itself as the weeks went on. Provided the quality of the content remained at a sufficient level, and there were enough incentives for people to keep tuning in, then it could be a successful venture.
References
“Caring Theory Defined.” Watson Caring Science Institute - International Caritas Consortium.
Web. 19 Mar. 2011.
Noticeboard. (2010). Emergency Nurse, 18(3), 10. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
"Implications of Caring Theory." Watson Caring Science Institute - International Caritas
Consortium. Web. 19 Mar. 2011.
Suliman, W. A., Welmann, E., Omer, T., & Thomas, L. (2009). Applying Watson's Nursing
Theory to Assess Patient Perceptions of Being Cared for in a Multicultural Environment. Journal of Nursing Research (Taiwan Nurses Association), 17(4), 293-300. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Walker, C. A. (1996). Coalescing the theories of two nurse visionaries: Parse and
Watson. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24(5), 988-996. doi:10.1111/1365-2648.ep8550123
