I'm trying, really hard, to garner some stronger interest in my theory class. I'm just not feeling it. I like the journal article reading, but it's the interpretation that is killing me.
Today, I had the pleasure of writing up part of a paper. In said paper, we have five journal articles that we had to evaluate (articles are from a prior assignment). My job was to write about the operational definitions and the theoretical applications of the five articles.
Sounds like fun, right? Right? RIGHT?!?!
Come on, play along with me. It's exciting! It's fun! It's all about becoming a midwife!
Ahem. Ok, so it's not that fun or exciting.
Four weeks into this term, and I'm ready for the end.
17 comments:
I can write theory. Love it. Comes from 5 years at a university taking communications theory. No degree which is fine as it would have been a useless one.
I wish I could help you. :)
How much longer do you have? You are gonna be such an amazing Midwife!!
2 years and 8 months to go. Tick tock, tick tock.
The time is going to fly by and you are going to be the next rocking midwife!!! You've made it this far, the rewards are almost here!!!
The only way I ever get these papers done is by dictating to my husband, who has PhD in physics. Otherwise as soon as I have a good thought in my head it leaves before getting down on the page. Good luck!
My way of getting around it? Try to find the bits that cheerfully contridict each other and make the authors have an arguement in your paper.
I feel your pain. You get to take a research class after that that is just an extension of, you guess it, theory! So I should be writing up my part of the paper instead of reading your blog but I am brain dead from looking up papers that fit my criteria......So maybe I will take a nap. That is my usual stand by....How on God's green earth am I ever going to finish this? What is your topic?
Pinky - my LT partner and I decided on Health Promotion as our concept.
@ Tassiegal: great idea!!
I was wondering how much longer you had to go to finish school. I'm doing an on line MSN course, I am really enjoying. Reading and writing about topics I would never would have even thought about.
What counts as "theory" in this context?
Theory is the different nursing theories. We actually have a fairly wide range of topics we could research and write about. This theory course seems to lead right into the research course (next term), so they do tend to overlap in certain areas. I'm focusing on health promotion theory.
At the moment I am actively procrastinating writing up a critique for research. My research topic, I think, is caring and transition through pregnancy, delivery and postpartum specific to the woman's point of view. There is a lot out their for transitioning to parenting and I am hoping to use some of that. Good luck. It will get better or it will eventually end.
Self-efficacy + 2 LT parterners with newborns = no paper yet...
Great, I can't even spell partners...
Oh Alicia. Oh no.
One thing I believe makes a huge difference in the applicability of theory classes (and thus whether or not they're interesting) is how strictly they define what "counts" as a theory. If they insist that it has to be a Grand Nursing Theory, you're in trouble.
There have been some very interesting, germane, and applicable developments in *mid range* theory in nursing, and all manner of theories from *other disciplines* can be applicable to issues that nurses face. For example, I've been doing work in perinatal bereavement and there have been some really useful ideas coming out in bereavement theory in the last 10 years (continuing bonds, meaning reconstruction, post traumatic growth) that are just immensely helpful in working with moms who've lost babies.
Maternal role attainment is an example of a super-useful theory that comes from nursing - although this is generally considered a mid range theory, not a Grand Theory.
Grand Nursing Theory seems like a pretty dead area to me. Roy, Rodgers, Orem, Newman... blah, blah, blah. All this work was done in the 70s or earlier. It's either (a) so esoteric as to be useless in any practical application, or (b) so much Captian Obvious, over-academicized belaboring of what should be commonsense knowledge, as to be useless in any practial application.
When theory classes say, in essence "go explore your area of clinical interest from a theoretical standpoint, and bring in whatever theories from whatever discipline might help you," they can really be very cool and - I kid you not - a lot of fun.
When theory classes say, "choose from among these 6 blathering dead-end theories that apply to nothing, and write several pages of pointless blather about them," it is... well, all I can say is I honestly would rather have a root canal.
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