Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor's Journey of Faith and Self

by Roelofs, Lois Hoitenga

• ISBN13: 9781935265375
• ISBN10: 1935265377
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-08
• Publisher: Deep River Books

Summary

Imagine not wanting to be a nurse, teacher, or teacher of psychiatric nursing only to find yourself doing all three - and loving it! In Caring Lessons, Lois Roelofs tells her stories about being a rebellious ministers daughter, reluctant nurse, restless mom, perpetual student, and, eventually, fun-loving teacher. She used to tell her students that if she, an ordinary suburban sandbox mom, propelled by restlessness and prayer, could end up having a career, growing in faith, and getting a PhD, they could too. Roelofs brings the therapeutic use of self required in nursing to her writing. You will be amused, saddened, and inspired as you read this intimate and introspective memoir. You may even run to enroll or teach in a nursing program, and if youre already teaching nursing students, you may discover renewed gratitude for the privilege.With a national shortage of registered nurses over a half million projected this decade and a shortage of nursing faculty that causes nursing programs to turn qualified applicants away, Caring Lessons will encourage readers to think about becoming nurses or stimulate nurses to think about becoming teachers, both of which would address these critical shortages. The main theme of the book is caring caring for others and caring for oneself. The others in Roelofs' career involved students as well as patients: students in the classroom, clinical settings, and her office and patients in inpatient as well as in a variety of outpatient settings. In caring for others, the nurse as caregiver must care for herself; she did so by changing jobs to suit her interests, going back to school more than once to feed her crave for learning, and seeking professional help when first her restlessness as an unhappy housewife and, much later, illnesses of several people close to her and my husbands cancer invaded her personal life.The idea for writing Caring Lessons, a memoir of Roelofs' nursing career, came out of the blue while talking long distance with a nursing friend. We were nearing retirement, wondering what we would do with our time, when the subject of writing our nursing stories popped up. We both had developed a passion for our profession and felt the public needed to know more about nurses. What do they do? How do they think? How do they choose where to work and what kind of work they do? explains Roelofs. Furthermore she says, Because I couldn't find any memoirs written by nursing professors describing their career path, I felt I could reach out to others with my story of being a suburban sandbox mom who ended up having a career teaching nurses and getting a Ph.D.A few months later the writing began. She had just retired from a nearly forty-year nursing career and words had been tumbling through her mind at night complete lectures, clinical assignments, conversations with students. She said, I thought by writing the thousands of words, at least Id get them out of my head and be able to sleep. To further jog her memory, it helped that she'd saved many books, papers, and notes from my schooling experiences diploma in nursing to bachelors to masters through PhD and many teaching materials and appointment books from the final twenty years that she spent in academia. It seemed as though she was telling her stories to her nursing students her students always said her stories were the best part of her course. Stay-at-home-need-something-more moms will find humor and hope in this account of a mom who failed at being a happy housewife and then learned to juggle school, work, and motherhood. They will also learn what its like to be a nurse, a psychiatric nurse perhaps they or loved ones are living with mental illness, a teacher of nursing students, and an older student going back to school.People doubting their faith will find an authentic account of the authors reliance on prayer and faith as she pursues a career that others initially decided for her. People thinking about going into nursing will find the sto