Verdier i endring i sykepleie

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe, attempt to explain and discuss the change in values the post-modern society has undergone during the last 20 years. The question is: How has the original philosophy for choosing a self-effacing calling altered? In the late part of the 19th century the church still played a dominant role in the society. Values such as charity and humility were deeply rooted in the population and compassion was the motive for choosing a calling such as nursing. The deaconesses who dominated the nursing profession at that time, thought it important that the correct disposition in nursing should be prompted by a need to help, to assist the sick and the suffering. A little more than 100 years later society has become pluralistic. Technology solves many problems, it attempts to eliminate disease and suffering is shunned. Students who choose nursing education are characterized by a diversity of views of life, ambivalence and heterogenity. Their objectives/motives for choosing nursing are general and vague, in that they state their wish to become nurses is motivated by a desire for contact with human beings/to help others, to do something useful for society. There is reason to ask whether the desire for human contact/to help has another meaning for the young students of today than it had for the women who chose nursing in earlier periods.