Hey, all... one quick post then I'm going back to bed because my BIG FAT DOG is hiding under my computer desk. Its storming outside... she's such a ninny.
Ok, for my nursing trends class (which I despise, more on that later), we have to write a research paper on a topic that directly or indirectly affects nursing.
After some thought, I decided on a topic which I think is interesting and can also use for my letter to a congressperson project (hello? I wrote a letter to a senator in fargin' 7th grade!). My topic is: the importance of governmentally funded research for early onset bipolar disorder (prepubescent), to potentially lead to early diagnosis and treatment for more bipolar kids. This is correlated with a large percentage of kids in juvenile detention centers who have documented mental illnesses. So my slant is: better research into early onset bipolar disorder, which is often misdiagnosed as mania or ADHD and medicated with Ritalin, better treatment, more productive lives, less juvenile crime/violence/incarceration. I think its pretty good, interesting, combines my 2 favorite subjects: psych and crime.
Ok, so yesterday in class people are discussing what their topics are.
They are:
Needle sticks
Medication errors
Mandatory overtime
Bioterrorism something or other
Do you think my topic is too indirect?
It definitely affects nursing, in my view, both acute care psychiatric nursing and corrections nursing (in the juvenile detention centers). Nurses should be concerned about health policy and governmentally funded research to improve the quality of life for people with mental or physical illness, right?
However, I'm a little concerned because my topic isn't quite as direct, concrete, and linear as the other people in my class.
About the letter to the congressman assignment ... Such letters are usually written (and such assignments are usually given) with the assumption that there is a bill before the Congress that addresses the issue. The purpose of the letter is to influence your Representative's response to the proposed bill. Is there such a bill before Congress related to your topic? If not, then your letter will probably be simply read and thrown away -- in other words, virtually wasted. With the current political climate, few Representatives are going to propose new legislation on such a topic in the near future. So, unless you know of a related bill to comment upon or have some reason to suspect that your Representative may have sufficient motivation already to sponsor a new bill, then your topic is probably not well-suited to the letter to a Congressman assignment.
I just wanted to address this one issue. There actually is a bill before Congress, introduced in the House called the Children's Mental Health Service Expansion Act (H.R. 5078). That's part of the reason why I chose this topic initially.
I just wanted to address this one issue. There actually is a bill before Congress, introduced in the House called the Children's Mental Health Service Expansion Act (H.R. 5078). That's part of the reason why I chose this topic initially.
Great. I didn't know what the status was. I just hated to see you spend all that effort only to have your letter thrown in the waste basket.
Good luck with your studies and your career. While I haven't participated in other threads with you, I gather from this thread that this is not the first time you have "turned left while everyone else turned right" and followed your own path. I have a tendency to do that a little myself as my mind and education is a little different from many of my colleagues. At the age of 47 and having been a nurse since I was 22, I still struggle with the question of when to conform to be like everyone else and when to risk forging my own path. Sometimes it's best to do one, sometimes the other. It's not easy either way.
The only thing is the movie wasn't true to life. Nash was gay.
Where did you get this? I've done some research on Nash and there has been no mention of this. Not that there would be anything wrong with it as movies usually do take some creative license.
You know, more than being the brave intellectual and forging my own path, I think its a matter of expectations. My own expectations, mostly. I often feel like I need to produce work more creative and of higher quality than other students, if only because of my class rank. Like I have a reputation to live up to.
Totally of my own creation.
I just wanted to address the part about the bill. Thank you for your thoughtful posts on this topic.
and despite my wanting to take a creative turn on a very boring subject (we didnt have a lot of choice in our topics) I couldnt call my paper "the pimping out of nursing jobs to unskilled workers"
I had to instead , call it "the use of unregulated health care workers in place of rn's and the havoc it ensues"
or something like that, truthfully I have put every tid bit from that class right outta my head
I didnt like any of the courses I took last semester
at least I sat in the back with the other underachievers :)
delirium
629 Posts
Not me, man. Nursing school is for chumps.
I'll be doing something far more interesting. Hopefully it won't involve incarceration in any way.