Does this strike a chord witrh anyone?

Nurses can learn from other oppressed peoples

The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others....One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body....

--W.E.B. Dubois in The Soul of Black People

Old school isn't always the right school

The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors,

--Paulo Freire from Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Toys in the Attic

They have no consciousness of themselves as persons or as members of an oppressed class.

---Paulo Freire from Pedagogy of the Opressed

Over Stimulated

I left work an hour ago, but my brain brought mementos along for kicks. In the shower the running water first sounds like the monitor. Then the phone rings. No, wait that really is my phone. I don’t know. The sounds keep coming back like mosquitoes surveying your head. I can still feel my stethoscope around my neck. Finally, I sigh, “I wonder if I’m getting overtime for this.”

--quotes from Confessions of an ADD Nurse

Context Trumps Values

Context trumps values. A study at the Princeton Seminary found that intentionally hurried, seminary students, conflicted between being on time to help with an experiment or to stop to help a “victim” they encountered while walking to the experiment, ignored or “did not perceive” the ethical dilemma the victim created and continued on to the experiment 90% of the time. Gladwell paraphrased these findings saying:

. . . the convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less importa nt than immediate context of your behavior . . . the words “you’re late” had the effect of making someone who is ordinarily compassionate into someone . . . indifferent to suffering.

Dawn Freshwater has written, “As nurses we would do well to question our own responses in situations of stress and conflict and the manifestations of oppression in everyday clinical practice”