A Short History of Anti-pathophysiologicalism

[jmqphd]

The college system in which I teach is calling a multi-campus-wide curriculum meeting. Rumor has it that the "bigs" want to tone down the pathophysiology in our Med-Surg Curriculum. I'm old. I've been around nursing for a long time and this is same song second verse. Been there, seen that. Here we go again. Good grief.

In the beginning there were diploma schools with their "materia medica" designed and often taught by doctors. Then, the world of nurses rose up, and BEHOLD...

There were baccalaureate programs offering a new degree... the BSN. Nurses finally had the respect of all creatures on the earth... having their own academic major, their own departments... Lo, even their own "Schools of Nursing" with their own deans and everything!

But, vanity of vanities... this meant nurses had to have their "own unique body of knowledge". (Whatever that meant.) So across all the face of the earth, there assembled the prophet(esses) of nursing dogma, speaking their wisdom in dreams and visions. The Nightingale's song gave way to the mysteries of the metatheorist, the describers of professions, the analyzers of cultures, Middling and Grand theorists, researchers of nursing research and educators of nursing educators. The doctoral dissertations went forth and multiplied across the land and prospered mightily.

Then, in the fullness of days the Tower of Nursing Babel was brought low by the plagues of patient care. All the world's symposia on taxonomies and competencies, the hours of faculty lounge blather, and scholarship on body aura and therapeutic non-touch could not add one minute to the span of life for one hypoxic patient, one septic grandmother, or one shattered trauma victim.

Then did the theorizers, researchers, and educators protest. The laws of life and death were too burdensome! Giving due worship to physiological reality would be like unto the ways of the malefactors of the medical model. Far be it from nurses to become hand-maids once again! "We will not have these men to rule over us!" Thus the researchers and theorizers and educators spake unto each other and proclaimed nursing to be a religion of the right brain, the intuitive and feminine mind. Woe unto those who came to the font of nursing with their left-brain-logic and hard science blasphemy. The defenders of the nursing temple would rise up! and deny tenure to all who would violate even the least of the Grand Theories or feminist principles that ruled supreme.

But, alas, having sold their birthright for a bowl of philosophical pottage they increasingly turned to Pharm D's and Physiologists to educate their youth.

Eyes they have, but they see not.