DOI: 10.1097/01.NCC.0000305676.90963.2e

,  

,  

PMID: 18176124

Issn Print: 0162-220X

Publication Date: 2008/01/01


Print

Could Quality of Life Be the Universal Language for Nursing?

Pamela S. Hinds

    loading  Checking for direct PDF access through Ovid

Excerpt

If oncology nursing spoke a universal language, what benefits would result for our patients, our colleagues, and our discipline? The idea of a universal language was documented in the biblical story of Babel, and the quest to construct a universal language-primarily for literary purposes-gained a foothold in the 17th century through the writings of Leibniz. The advancement of this quest to a spoken universal language evolved into several forms in the 19th century with Esperanto becoming the more established language among several competitors. Relatedly, mathematics was referred to as the only universal language among humans regardless of culture, ethnicity, or religion. These constructed languages were built on patterns of repetition, rules of logic, and memorization and depended upon large groups of individuals learning the patterns and rules. Anticipated benefits of a universal language included being able to resolve contentious global problems to avoid conflict and to connect persons across place and time to benefit from each other's thinking such that the positive elements of societies became available to all to benefit all equally. Despite centuries of effort, a universal language does not exist.
The remarkable contents of this issue of Cancer Nursing suggest that in oncology nursing, we may have an undeclared universal language. Unlike efforts noted above, our specialty's universal language does not appear to be constructed following statistical principles. Instead, this language seems to emanate from a more naturalistic approach that reflects our shared values across cultures, ethnicities, age, sex, and faiths. This language in oncology nursing is quality of life (generally thought of as the well-being of a group, or an individual or a group's perceptions of physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual health over time). Attention to quality of life helps us as oncology nurses to know the impact of illness and of care interventions on the lives of our patients and to anticipate what one individual or a group needs to achieve their definition of quality of life in very complex, changing clinical situations. The reports in this issue reflect careful approaches to identifying patterns of human response to illness-patterns, yes-but not statistical rules of repetition to predict what follows in terms of integers but, instead, what follows in terms of human meaning during illness. The strength of quality of life as a universal language in oncology nursing is that it assists us in understanding the values, care preferences, and care decisions of our patients and of our colleagues. This language helps us to understand each other and gives us opportunity to refine or revise our care based on the feedback from our patients and their families, our own clinical intuition, and our research-no principles of repetitive patterns from a universal language could cue us to alter our care in as accurate and sensitive manner as does understanding our patients' quality of life. Attention to quality of life in our specialty may help us to understand global meanings of human efforts to prevent, to be cured of, or to live with and die of cancer. These potential benefits are substantial enough to merit the use of quality of life to undergird our research, clinical care, educational, and administrative efforts.
My very best to you.
    loading  Loading Related Articles