COVID-19 Pandemics: an opportunity to give Nursing global visibility

When we think of the internationalization of Nursing, we immediately imagine the visibility provided by research, through scientific publications, presentations in congresses, professor and student movements when they offer the perfect opportunity to show what we do best. That was what I was thinking some days ago when I accepted the honor of writing this editorial. However, today the world has changed in unimaginable ways, and the certitude, completeness, the supposed perfection and, above all, the misconception of dominance and control that most human beings desire are interrupted by a world pandemics caused by a coronavirus: the COVID-191, which has openly made us face the idea that we are working on our self-elimination.

This situation has also presented the nurses all over the world the great opportunity of higher visibility, by demonstrating our skills in knowledge, research, creativity and, as stated by the biologist Humberto Maturana, demonstrating the skills we have for our own autopoiesis, referring to that possibility of self-organization, of self-construction and adaptation to what our common ecological niche offers today: The Earth2.

This leads us to understand and interpret a new care cosmovision by acknowledging the complexity of the globalized problems of life where uncertainty and chaos3 emerge, so that we can meditate and create new questions that will lead us to new forms of education, research and development of innovative practices.

We should begin by the education in Nursing, affected by the pandemics, reaching a decisive point that Fritjof Capra4 calls “the crucial point”, when it allows this accelerated spinning to the concept of presence and flexibility, field of online education, implementing education strategies that we had never imagined with the end of continually improve the development of our curricula with a clear goal: to achieve the learning skills that our Nursing students require to face the challenges presented today by a global virus, which does not only affect health through lesions in the upper and lower respiratory tract, but also threatens to affect social-economical and family dynamics, not to mention, very likely, all the population’s mental health.

Maybe that would be the perfect excuse to consolidate Nursing education skills that contribute to developing beings integrated into the Universe, who would share different theories or concepts, respecting one another and applying for themselves what is good for the common welfare. That can be achieved by developing the awareness of our own and the collective meaning to know where we live, where we are and where we intend to arrive, that is to say: to define the end and the beginning of a path to rethink education and analyze reality from new categories of interpretation, since we cannot solve current problems with yesterday’s education 5^-6.

In research, we should analyze a new world scenario to offer, in public health, a different setting that can provide new answers and questions towards a new way of being, thinking, valuing and acting that necessarily lead, as Boff Says, “to new values, new dreams and new behaviors adopted by a greater number of people and communities”. May we welcome the affliction generated by COVID-19; recalling Estanislao Zuleta7 in his “Praise to difficulty”, in this particular moment in the history of humanity, let us praise Doroteam Orem8, Nola Pender8, among many other theorists that look for health promotion and prevention with a focus on self-care. Let us be really multipliers in our field with the promotion of practices that improve our ability to take care of ourselves, take care of others and care for our planet9.

It is time to look straight into the future and propose research that offers solutions to current problems with studies that approaches human beings by covering their biological and cultural nature, bringing down old structures, giving way to network multidisciplinary practice and looking for complementarity, dialog and cooperation. It is time to present your best tools, such as the Nursing process10, the ability of care management11, or in brief words: Nursing is now.

All this will allow Nursing to stand out in the field of public health and intensive care, committed to ethics, to provide an educational recommendation based on scientific grounds with the best evidence - coming from international agencies such as the World Health Foundation and the most qualified scientists - to refrain and mitigate COVID-19 epidemics12^-14.

Thank you, COVID-19, for allowing us to be astonished, to reinvent ourselves and be aware that we are part and whole of a health team that needs leaders who will urgently help transform public policies.

REFERENCES

• 1. Organización Mundial para la Salud (CH) [Internet]. Ginebra: OMS; c2020 [citado 2020 mayo 15]. Alocución de apertura del Director General de la OMS en la rueda de prensa sobre la COVID-19 celebrada el 11 de marzo de 2020; [about 1 screen]. Disponible en: https://www.who.int/es/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020
  » https://www.who.int/es/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020
• 2. Maturana H. Transformacion en la convivencia. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Dolmen; 1999.
• 3. Briggs J, Peat D. Las siete leyes del caos. Barcelona: Editorial Grijalbo; 1999.
• 4. Capra F. El punto crucial. Barcelona: Editorial Integral; 1999.
• 5. Morin E. Los siete saberes necesarios para la educación del futuro. Paris: UNESCO; 1999.
• 6. Morin E. La mente bien ordenada: repensar la reforma, reformar el pensamiento. Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral; 2000.
• 7. Zuleta E. Elogio de la dificultad y otros ensayos. Barcelona: Ariel [s.d.] [citado 2020 mayo 15]. Disponible en: https://www.planetadelibros.com.co/libros_contenido_extra/31/30482_1_Elogio_zuleta.pdf
  » https://www.planetadelibros.com.co/libros_contenido_extra/31/30482_1_Elogio_zuleta.pdf
• 8. Tomey AM, Alligood MR. Modelos y teorías en enfermería. 6. ed. Barcelona: Elsevier; 1997.
• 9. Boff L. El cuidado esencial: ética de lo humano, compasión por la tierra. Madrid: Editorial Trotta; 2002.
• 10. Gutiérrez OA, Torres CA, Loboa NJ. Factores relacionados con la aplicación del proceso de enfermería en instituciones hospitalarias de Colombia. Rev Cuid. 2018;9(1):2007-16. doi: https://doi.org/10.15649/cuidarte.v9i1.480
  » https://doi.org/10.15649/cuidarte.v9i1.480
• 11. Campos PIA, Gutiérrez HC, Matzumura JPK. Rotación y desempeño laboral de los profesionales de enfermería en un instituto especializado. Rev Cuid. 2019;10(2):e626. doi: https://doi.org/10.15649/cuidarte.v10i2.626
  » https://doi.org/10.15649/cuidarte.v10i2.626
• 12. Manual para la prevención y tratamiento de COVID-19. Austin: University of Texas; 2020 [citado 2020 mayo 15]. Disponible en: https://nursing.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/manual_para_la_prevencio%CC%81n_y_tratamiento_de_covid19.pdf
  » https://nursing.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/manual_para_la_prevencio%CC%81n_y_tratamiento_de_covid19.pdf
• 13. Toledo J. Prevención y control de infecciones y nuevo coronavirus (COVID-19): precauciones estándares y uso de equipos de protección personal. Washington, DC: OPAS; 2020 [citado 2020 mayo 10]. Disponible en: https://www.paho.org/es/documentos/presentacion-prevencion-control-infecciones-nuevo-coronavirus-covid-19-precauciones
  » https://www.paho.org/es/documentos/presentacion-prevencion-control-infecciones-nuevo-coronavirus-covid-19-precauciones
• 14. van Doremalen N, Bushmaker T, Morris DH, Holbrook MG, Gamble A, Williamson BN, et al. Aerosol and surface stability of SARS-CoV-2 as compared with SARS-CoV-1 [Letter]. New Engl J Med. 2020;382(16):1564-7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMc2004973
  » https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  28 Aug 2020
• Date of issue
  2020