Realities of Canadian Nursing: Professional, Practice, and Power Issues

From a uniquely Canadian perspective, Realities of Canadian Nursing explores the most important and timely professional, legal, ethical, political, social, economic, and environmental issues today. The value of this text is that students’ gain a knowledge base of issues and trends while the authors transform their thinking and inspire students to participate in political action alongside the generations of nurses who have already taken the lead. Influential scholars throughout Canada critically analyze and do not shy away from the tensions and contradictions that exist between nurses’ legislated authority to self-regulate and the changing nature and realities of nurses’ work while inspiring more nurses to influence decision making in professional associations, collective bargaining units, government, and workplace. Realities of Canadian Nursing helps students understand the long-standing barriers to many of the issues that confront nurses and the Canadians who seek nurses’ services. With this understanding, graduates will be in the best position to make contributions to their resolution.

The authors know that students can learn about issues and trends in nursing and healthcare in a variety of ways, and they go to great lengths to ensure the text offers readers more than an update on issues in nursing and healthcare. In chapter 1 of the text, the authors offer a Framework for Analysis, which gives students and educators a shared and organized format through which to identify, analyze, and most importantly, to strategize about solving the issues. An explicit goal of the Realities of Canadian Nursing is to model for students how changes to nursing and healthcare can only happen with informed political action on the part of nurses. The text also guides students through a reflection on how they can change the conversation in healthcare and give voice to the unheard concerns of nurses. In this edition, the authors will retain the content and features that have made this text the mostly widely used issues and trends book in the Canada, while creating space for new and emerging health care issues including Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the subsequent Calls to Action.

Our text is packaged with learning/teaching tools designed to prepare students for the NCLEX as well as help faculty integrate their course resources with their required text. We also offer Powerpoint presentations, an Image Bank, Strategies for Effective Teaching, and Case Study Scenarios with related short answer questions and answers that can be assigned for homework or used in class.