Being Called to Care

By Mary Ellen Lashley, Maggie T. Neal, Emily Todd Slunt, Louise M. Berman, and Francine H. Hultgren

Subjects: Nursing
Paperback : 9780791418406, 215 pages, March 1994
Hardcover : 9780791418390, 215 pages, April 1994

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Table of contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Preface

I. Setting the Context

1. What Does It Mean to Be Called to Care?
Louise M. Berman

2. Ways of Responding to the Call
Francine H. Hultgren

II. Living the Call as Inquiring Learners

3. Vulnerability: The Call to Woundedness
Mary Ellen Lashley

4. Living the Call Authentically
Emily Todd Slunt

5. Using Lived Experiences to Question Structure and Conformity
Maggie T. Neal

III. Experiencing the Call through Stories in Nursing and Education

6. Being with the Elderly: A Unique Call to Care
Mary Ellen Lashley

7. Caring: A Foundation for Becoming Competent
Emily Todd Slunt

8. A Pedagogy for Caring: Viewing a Student as a Work of Art
Maggie T. Neal

IV. Sustaining the Call through Being in Possibility

9. Being Called to Care: Circular Challenges
Louise M. Berman

10. Being Called to Care--or--Caring Being Called to Be: Do We Have a New Question?
Francine H. Hultgren

11. Keeping the Call Alive
Mary Ellen Lashley, Maggie T. Neal, and Emily Todd Slunt

Index

Description

Although the major part of this book focuses on rethinking nursing education, the essence of this book, the notion of "being called to care" is of relevance to all human service professionals who are responsible for ministering to the needs of others. The authors set the context for what it means to be "called to care" and explore ways of responding to a call. The three themes of vulnerability, authenticity, and structure are presented as foundational. Using a hermeneutic, interpretive approach to inquiry, insights are presented to uncover ways of conceptualizing and practicing curriculum through processes that join persons together in dialogue and reflection.

Mary Ellen Lashley is Assistant Professor in the Department of Nursing at Towson State University. Maggie T. Neal is at the University of Maryland's School of Nursing, Baltimore. Emily Todd Slunt is Chairperson of the Health Sciences Division and Director of the Nursing Education Program at Howard Community College, Maryland.

Reviews

"The important explorations and insights offered by the authors in this book provide vivid evidence of ways in which nurses exercise their responses to a call to care. This is not a sentimental text, nor is it a simple or singular approach. The text is not associated with religious ideology. It is deeply spiritual; it explores the common grounds of meaning in human existence. These authors have brought together insights that are grounded in nursing experience, transcend the limits of discrete moments of time and space, and offer for our consideration complex, difficult and challenging ideas and possibilities. For the student of caring, this book provides a rich resource for understanding the complex foundations upon which disciplined caring praxis rests. For the practitioner, this book provides a rich resource that can nurture the courage to act more fully, to hear more completely, to give voice to significant experience more confidently. " — Peggy L. Chinn, from the Foreword