Nursing, Caring, and Complexity Science. for Human Environment Well-Being

Description

2011 AJN Book of the Year Winner in Professional Development and Issues!

"This collected scholarship...will inform the personal/professional evolution of caring and nursing into this century and beyond, inviting new visions of the evolved human in the world of practice, education, research, administration, and clinical care. It is truly a visionary futuristic manifesto for this time in nursing and health sciences at all levels."

Jean Watson, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN
University of Colorado Denver College of Nursing
Founder: Watson Caring Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado
(From the Reflection)

This innovative volume explores nursing and complexity science, and investigates how they relate in research, education, and practice. The book examines best methods for using complex systems, with expert contributing authors drawn from nursing, sociology, informatics, and mathematics. Each author is actively involved in studying and applying complexity science in diverse populations and various settings-especially in terms of nursing, chronic care, health care organizations, and community health networks.

Chapters conclude with a response written by a nursing scholar, administrator, or practitioner, focusing on chapter concepts relevant to the complex systems seen in nursing. Chapters also include models that relate how these concepts can be used in practice, management, education, and research-from micro to macro scales. The first of its kind, this book demonstrates the potential of complex systems perspectives in nursing and health care research, education, and practice.

Key Features

• Presents the central concepts of complexity science as they relate to nursing
• Facilitates greater understanding of human caring relationships through the lens of complex organizational systems
• Provides examples of how to create and implement complex systems models that enhance care for individuals, and in leadership roles, organizational caring, nursing informatics, and research methods

Table of Contents

Contributors
Foreword
Reflection
Prologue
Acknowledgments

1. Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives Related to Complexity Science in Nursing
2. Complex Caring Dynamics: A Unifying Model of Nursing Inquiry
3. Theoretical Issues and Methods for Increasing Understanding of Complex Health Care Systems
4. Relational Caring Complexity: The Study of Caring and Complexity in Health Care Hospital Organizations
5. Why Six Sigma Health Care Is Oxymoronic in Hospitals
6. Entropy as Information Content in Medical Research
7. Caring Science and Complexity Science Guiding the Practice of Hospital and Nursing Administrative Practice
8. Leadership in Complex Nursing and Health Care Systems
9. Mathematical Models of the Dynamics of Social Conflict
10. Modeling the Complexity of Story Theory for Nursing Practice
11. Providing Nursing Care in a Complex Health Care Environment
12. The Complexity of Diabetes and the Caring Role of the Nurse Practitioner
13. Lessons in Complexity Science: Preparing Student Nurses for Practice in Complex Health Care Systems
14. Technological Change in Health Care Electronic Documentation as Facilitated Through the Science of Complexity
15. Implementing Change in Nursing Informatics Practice
16. Human Rights and Humanoid Relationships in Nursing and Complexity Science

Epilogue: Emerging Ideas/Questions for the Future of Nurse Caring and Health Care in a Complex World
Addendum
Index

Author Bio

Marilyn A. Ray, RN, PhD, CTN, Professor Emeritus, Florida Atlantic University, is a renowned nursing educator. Previous awards include Yingling Visiting Scholar, Virginia Commonwealth University; Eminent Scholar, FAU; and Visiting Lecturer, University of Alberta, Clinical Sciences Division. Other fellowships as visiting scholar include Ministry of Health, Ontario, Canada, and universities in Australia. She has taught at Union Institute, Cincinnati; University of Colorado School of Nursing, Center for Human Caring; McMaster University, Canada; and UCSF School of Nursing. From 19920-1999, she served in the National Guard with the rank of Colonel as teacher, researcher and administrator for the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine, Department of Academics, at several Air Force bases across the country and in the District of Columbia. She has edited two previous books, one with Jean Watson, has numerous chapters in other books and numerous peer reviewed articles. She is translated into German, Chinese, Japanese and Swedish. She has over 20 funded research grants and presents internationally.