Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: Nursing as reverse engineering...

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Nursing as reverse engineering...

At Scotland on Rails last month one of the sessions included an example of Ruby code outlining a 'morning routine'. It comprised a series of tasks and sub-tasks all of which led to getting to work.

Much of the vital essentials of the code I cannot understand beyond some tentative inklings, but in the hope of learning I've re-hashed the accessible bits and turned it into a NursingRoutine. The output looks like this....

Nursing....
"Non-judgmental attitude"
"Universal positive regard"
"Basic counselling skills"
"Open mind"
"Meet person"
"Receive referral"
"assess person utilizing Hodges model"
"Create care plan"
"Meet physical needs"
"Meet interpersonal needs"
"Meet political care needs"
"Meet social care needs"
"Holistic care"
"Evaluate physical needs"
"Evaluate interpersonal needs"
"Evaluate social care needs"
"Evaluate political care needs"
"Evaluate care"
"caring..."

Something like nursing is obviously a much more complex routine than that implied above - that is because:

  • nursing is not [some - 'thing'];
  • nursing can be represented as a routine BUT;
  • nursing seeks to transcend the routine: emphasizing the personal, unique, the humanistic;
  • nursing is parallel and sequential;
In addition now we are about collaborative, multidisciplinary care that must factor in agreement (the care plan...), and patient reported outcome measures (PROMS). ...

In the meantime I need to exercise care trying to understand the program that produced the output (that could also be easily printed as a list). While this is not an example there is such a thing as obfuscated code, but surely not obfuscated nursing care?