"Socialization into the Nursing Profession"

The Nursing Profession is still under an evolution phase, a phase of receding and evolving new paradigms.  The last decade and the arrival of the new millennium set up a new era of Nursing Knowledge, the Socialization Era of Nursing science.  Thus, the 21st century opened with monumental changes for the nursing profession with a graying nursing profession, a shortage of practicing nurses, an increasing demand for nurses, fewer nursing faculty, and a rapidly changing global healthcare arena.  For nurses to response to the needs of the rapidly changing global healthcare arena individuals must be socialized into the nursing profession. The profession of nursing recognizes socialization into a discipline is guided by theories use of language, identification of concepts, and definition of relationships, structured ideas, and facilitation of disciplined inquiry, practice and communication, as well as predicting outcome of nursing practice. 

Nursing professionals apply theory to describe, explain, predict or prescribe nursing practice. However, the process of socialization remains elusive. Educating the development of the individual as a nurse to be socialized into the nursing profession requires the individual understand the interlocking language, concepts, relationships, structured ideas, disciplined inquiry, and outcomes of nursing practice which forms a comprehensive umbrella for multiple practice applications within the profession of nursing.  Accounting for the past, present and emerging future of nursing provides the individual with the language for structuring ideas necessary for professional communication within nursing. 

As Alligood stated: "Application of nursing theory in practice depends on nurses having knowledge of the theoretical works as well as an understanding of how philosophies, models, and theories can relate to each other", (2002). But Nursing Science, or Nursing as discipline, or as profession require from nurses as individuals to acquire organizational culture through socialization within nursing profession.  We relate culture with socialization because the social change in our globe is indissoluble connected with the enculturation of individuals. Dominant paradigms in every field of science in order to receding and/or to emerge a new paradigm shift require scientific revolutions.  The Global Health Web, the Human Being Nursing Theory, the Social Entirety Nursing Theory, the Self Observation Methodology, and the Complexity Integration Nursing Theory provide a global language in order to describe complex phenomena as we meet them in the Science of Nursing. This common language is not consisting by norms, beliefs, and values but set the individual nurse as a free will human being within the network of the Entirety. In other words The Complexity Integration Nursing Theory defines the agents of socialization within the nursing profession. Moreover, in The Complexity Integration Nursing Theory, nurse is an individual human being mapping his/her existence through experimental works with his/herself. Actually he/she is socialized via a self-development reciprocal role. This role is a mutual interaction between the nurse as individual and the patient as individual human being.

Nurses through The Complexity Integration Nursing Theory framework are not passive participants in this interactive play, but merely as actors or players in life's drama they play all kind of roles, in order to attain wisdom and to attempt to understand their interactions.  In life's drama, some parts of the script have been established by the society, but more of the script is generated at a specific space-time where nurses as individuals are set as active participants. In this drama nurses as individuals have more than one entrance and more than one exit. Life's drama is complex, as also the world is complex. Nurses as individual human beings tend to manage the complexity of their life by breaking up the experiences into manageable components that have meaning. Student nurses have repeatedly expressed confusion regarding the multiple concepts and relationship with the practice, and a lack of understanding concerning the many courses required to complete a nursing degree. Student nurses script in life's drama is similar to the interpretation that student nurses as individual human beings live their life as the "platonic prisoners".

The “Evolving Essence of the Science of Nursing, A Complexity Integration Nursing Theory” presents for the undergraduate student an integrated and comprehensive philosophical and practical imagery guide within a world of complex phenomena and remarkably interconnectedness. The book will provide a detailed explanation of the Nursing Knowledge and Practice under the development of the Theory of Nursing Knowledge and Nursing Practice, an abstract and comprehensive nursing mathematical theory. Specifically the use and the application of the theory of Nursing Knowledge and Practice helps identify the core of the Science of Nursing in a global scale evolving a new paradigm shift that is transcended to a Metaholistic viewpoint. The Metaholistic paradigm is evolved through deep ecology framework and is a spiritual inner self-development, a new way of thinking, understanding, and acting, working and living. Nursing Science under the metaholistic viewpoint perception is a great intellectual adventure and imitates nature, because nursing, caring and healing are natural processes.

In the second part of the book, we discuss about the Evolution of Nursing Essence in the context of philosophical, scientific, cultural, metaphysical and social analysis. Specifically, we highlight the Platonic thought of the real and objective world, based upon Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. We emphasize in the Complexity and Chaos theory presenting the Human Being as an open complex self-organizing system incorporating four fundamental concepts (Philosophy, Science, Civilization incorporated in Culture and the Being). Finally, we reconstruct the Human Being through global philosophical aspects in order to conceptualize a Model of representation of the Human Being in the Complexity Integration Nursing Theory.In the third part, we are building on the Evolving Essence of the Individual Nurse, emerging the Social Entirety Nursing Theory. The Social Entirety Nursing Theory express concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by the global nursing profession, which shape a specific vision of reality that is underpinning of the way the nursing profession organizes itself. Concepts as: “Global Health Web”, “Social Entirety”, “Autopoiesis”, “Ontology of Nursing”, Noetic, Physical and Psychic Levels” are discussed in detail.

In the fourth part, we introduce the Self Observation methodology, which evolved from the Complexity Integration Nursing Theory. The Self Observation methodology incorporates the Self-Observation technique, which is comprised of the three actions of deep relaxation with introspection, self-observation, and transcendence, all occurring within a specific time and space; resulting in transcended reflection to discover balance or unbalance on the axis of nous, physical and psyche. Self Observation methodology is an evolutionary concept, because the outcome of the self-observation is the realization that the object of the observation (ie. the patient) and the subject of observation (ie. the nurse) are observable within and without each other, in a specific space and time through transcendent perception or thought. Thus, resulting in a very different perception of the reality placing the individual nurse to accept and confirm his/her responsibility for an urgent reconstruction of his Social self.

Part fifth is a series of Reflections on Nursing that illustrate how this textbook used to support a shifting paradigm across multiple nursing contexts. Nursing as an Art, The Postmodern Nursing Paradigm, A different Way of Working, A New way of Understanding, About Death and Dying and the Brave New World are chapters that help nurses to close the gap between qualitative and quantitative issues as we meet them in the nursing profession. In addition, these chapters can stand as creative metaphors in the every day clinical practice.

Many things have changed since Nightingale’s era, what remains, however, is the need of a key understanding about Human Beings as individuals and their placement in a comprehensive social framework. Alligood (2002) stated: “As the nursing profession development continues, it has become quite clear that critical thinking and professional nursing practice are inextricably linked”, but we must be sure that critical thinking, as a concept, doesn’t trapped us in the Platonic Cave to see only the shadows of the reality;

The Complexity Integration Nursing Theory provides a different pathway in order to socialize nurses into the profession, creating a world that can be perceived as objective and real by reaffirming the whole and real nature of our existence, by decoding the unconscious and promoting the meaningful interconnectedness with the others.