Where I've been, am now, and hope to go with Integral Nursing
I'm a man with a wife, 3 sons, 1 princess, and one grandson. I'm a Nurse by profession and passion, currently working on my masters in that field. But I am getting ahead of myself…
Where have I been?
I went through elementary school labeled an underachiever, what is now labeled as ADD. By first grade, my mother’s complaint/brag about me was that she could never get my nose out of a book. She had to take me to the library twice as often as she would have gone herself, as I used up over half of her limit on her library card, despite two book subscriptions.
I got my first introduction to geometry and trigonometry and physics and relativity in the book, The Music of the Spheres, before I had mastered my multiplication tables. I have never been a good “traditional” student, and got my first “A” in 6th grade. But I have always had a passion for learning, which has been reflected in making National Honor Society in High school, and twice being offered membership in the nursing honor society Sigma Theta.
In formal education, I have at least 20 Semester hours each in Physics, Chemistry, Psychology, Sociology and Math, plus Associate Degrees in Medical Lab Technology and Nursing and a Bachelor’s Degree in Food Science. These have given me a broad understanding of human biopsychosocial conditions. And now I have devoted 30 months in the MSN program with the University of Phoenix(I will speak more about the significance of this program later). My adaptation of a Blood Analyzer to perform ABO blood groupings with RH phenotype and G6PD and Sickle Cell screening from one blood sample and the research my officer and I performed on this machine resulted in a Multimillion Dollar purchase by the US Navy.
Five years of concentrated training in transformation and self-awareness, with “est”, and later with years of study and achieving “Clear” with Scientology, greatly facilitated my understanding and ability to apply Transformational Change Management Theory, Energy Therapies, and the Nursing Models of Florence Nightingale, Jean Watson, Rosemarie Parse, Margaret Newman, and Martha Rogers (again, the significance of this will have to wait).
Twelve years experience in Medicine as a Hospital Corpsman, thirteen years in Gerontological Nursing, and now a year in hospital practice as a “travel nurse” have given me a base for evaluating and appreciating the vast differences between these fields, as well as how these disparate fields could be better integrated. I have, through this MSN program, regained and surpassed my childhood cognitive intelligence, which had been drastically diminished by the “cram & test” educational system. I would estimate my IQ as being in the 160+range again, based on the increasing frequency of intuitive leaps in understanding new materials and integrating them into communicable cognitive constructs.
I give praise to all my instructors and classmates at the University of Phoenix for the constant improvement in my ‘naturally’ dismal emotional intelligence, beginning this program with an IQ generously estimated at 40, and now seeming to approach a ‘normal’ 100. I have a long way to go,but will continue to work on improving in this area. All help from classmates, through pointing out my deficiencies in this area have been appreciated. Yes, initially resented (Low IQ, Low “meme”?), but quickly changing to appreciation as the criticism was understood.
Over the prior 29 months I have devoted hundreds of hours ‘absorbing’ anything and everything I have been able to find in the UoP eResource library on theory and application of intentionality, presence, and ‘energy/spirit’ therapies and combined these with the understandings gained in other education and experience. I seemed to have been approaching readiness to formulate, and prepare for possible publication, a manuscript describing a novel theory/model for Nursing Presence and its effect on the effectiveness of medical and nursing interventions, consistent with current nursing theories and research.
Only in the last few months have I begun “understanding” where all of this history has been leading. Beginning with Holsync Meditation and a much expanded presentation of developmental theory (thank you Bill Harris of the Centerpointe Research Institute http://www.centerpointe.com/), continuing with Susanne Cook-Greuter’s research results in Adult Ego Development, Mature Meaning Making and Wisdom (http://www.www.cook-greuter.com/), Ken Wilber’s extensive writings on AQAL (http://wilber.shambhala.com/), and members of the Integral Institute’s beginning Integral models of almost everything (http://in.integralinstitute.org/), I have a workable map of the territory I have been exploring.
Where am I now?
It is only now that I have gained sufficient “altitude” to see the territory I have covered in the last 29 months that I can “view” where I have been and gain “in-sight” into my goal. The fact that almost all of the resources I accumulated for this project were written by nurses who had PhD’s, or were final dissertations for a PhD, did not register...nor did the fact that many of my instructors thanked me for helping to teach their classes.
With my lack of “altitude” when beginning this Masters program, I did not have a map which would enable me to appreciate that this program was designed to assist me in bringing all of my developmental lines up from “amber” or “orange” to “green”. I do not know if that was by conscious design, but I can see that this is what my program has done for most of my classmates (colors mentioned refer to stages of development using Don Beck’s expansion of Claire Graves’ values research, “Spiral Dynamics”, structure / format (see: Beck, D class=GramE>. (2004,2005) What Is Spiral Dynamics Integral? http://in.integralinstitute.org/faq-pdf.aspx?id=6)).
Apparently, with the combination/synergy of my starting this program with most of my lines already at or beyond (formal operations level) “green” and a final project requiring at least a “turquoise” level of cognition, this powerful learning method facilitated growth along most of my developmental lines... beyond “green” to “yellow” or “turquoise”, with my cognitive abilities advancing well into “turquoise” and reaching for “indigo” (see Wilber, K. (2007) Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Postmodern World, Integral books: Boston, London.
Where do I want to go from here?
Immediate goal: Complete my masters program and begin teaching/learning integral nursing theory and practice. This may include academic, on-line, and institutional-setting instruction (Florence Nightingale taught at a turquoise level we should be able to rise to her level and continue her teaching, vastly augmented by the modern and postmodern discoveries, methods, and achievements of the last 100 years).
Medium-term goals: Become a functioning member of the Integral Health community, integrating Nursing’s postmodern theories (esp. those of Parse, Rogers, M. Newman) with currently developing technologies for, and understandings of, the subtle energy fields (turquoise) and causal energy fields.
Long-long-term goals: Possibly doctoral and post-doc work in transforming healthcare (elevating our profession to turquoise and beyond), possibly beginning with research to validate Nursing Presence as a Nursing Intervention for most if not all Nursing Diagnoses, and to facilitate a return to Medicine the awareness that their medical equivalent, commonly referred to as ‘bed-side manner’, has always been and will continue to be the most important medical intervention.
