Struggling for their lives Essay Example for Free

Struggling for their lives Essay Having read Mairs’ â€Å"On Being a Cripple,† it can be noted that Bogan’s epigraph is found to be perfectly appropriate. It is plain that the epigraph introduces the possibility of an escape from an implied predicament, which in this narrative, happens to be the author’s condition which she openly acknowledges as she writes â€Å"I am a cripple. I choose this word to name me† (Mairs, 159). However, it remains as a mere idea, something to be entertained. The first statement which defines that freedom from a burden can easily be devised. The confinement or the burden may be clear-cut and tangible as the author’s physical disability; the escape, however, can come in the form of a cure, an outlook, or geographical relocation. Initially, this reader is given to think that perhaps the easiest escape is to run away from everything and wish fervently that an intangible confinement will not follow you, to shed problems by simply changing the address. That’s understandably a very basic, human preconception. It sometimes works. But more often than it does, it may be best to stay dismal, especially if what you are running from is a condition or an issue unbound by territory. It could also mean withdrawing from people you see everyday, shutting out family, your spouse, as a defense mechanism to avoid being hurt as recounted by Mairs: Most twenty-two- and nineteen-year-olds, like George and me, can vow in clear conscience, after a childhood of chicken pox and summer colds, to keep one another in sickness and in health so long as they both shall live. Not many are equipped for catastrophe: the dismay, the depression, the extra work, the boredom that a degenerative disease can insinuate into a relationship. And our society, with its emphasis on fun and its association of fun with physical performance, offers little encouragement for a whole spouse to stay with a crippled partner. (p. 163) Another type of escape that is next entertained is any meansof cure. As Mairs complains on page 164, â€Å"because I hate being crippled, I sometimes hate myself for being a cripple. † This being the case, it is not uncommon for people to go to great lengths only to be disappointed. We are led to believe that this is a way for us to escape just the same – escape death, that is. For most people, it is nothing to spend a fortune just to have a family remain a vegetable until the end. That kind of escape is nothing compared to the atrocity of dying! And there are few who would even consider â€Å"death as more an escape† – from pain, humilitation, wasting away without event (Mairs, 166). It appears that anything is so much better than the current situation, and the cost of an escape is miniscule. As often is the case, a change of outlook is usually opted as the last resort, without knowing that it is by far the most enlightening solution that can even defy location and medicine. This reader would definitely agree that a positive outlook – and a good sense of humor – is the best escape, if it could ever be considered as one. On the contrary, it is more a resignation from the aggressive attempts at escaping. On one’s sense of humor, Mairs remarks that it is â€Å"the easiest to lose and the hardest to survive without† (Mairs, 160). That may be, but it can also be easily revived once we stop feeling sorry for ourselves. Once we free ourselves by taking stock of what we still have instead of grumbling about our losses, it will begin to dawn that it is searching and spending nothing on an escape actually is nothing compared to letting go of the burden. As Mairs writes, Months and even years went by without catastrophe, and really I was awfully busy. And I hadnt the time, let alone the inclination, to devote myself to being a disease. (p. 167) Finally, the epigraph drives the nail home about how the author approached the conflict of her narrative, which is centrally based on experience. It provides the reader a hunch as to how a solution or a particular transition can be offered and accepted and finally be applied. As Mairs writes her response to â€Å"the cosmic deal† beautifully, she declares that â€Å"I might as well do the job myself. Now that Im getting the hang of it† (Mairs, 168). It is a fine denuoement, which marks a closure defined by a wonderful sense of being. Work Cited Mairs, Nancy. â€Å"On being a cripple. † The Search for Self and Personal Values.

Addressing Safety in Home Care Essay -- Health Care, Registered Nurses

A universal aspiration for all Registered Nurses (RN) and workplace environments is to create a safe atmosphere for both the client and employees. The RN has an obligation to ensure, â€Å"a culture of safety by using established occupational health and safety practices, and other safety measures to protect client, self and colleagues from injury or potentially abusive situations† (Saskatchewan Registered Nurses’ Association, 2007, p. 11). This competency guides RN’s to provide and advocate safe practice environments. Thus, the issue this paper will discuss is Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S). The population being focused on is home care, which is, â€Å"care provided to patients in their homes to restore their functional capacity, to allow them to manage their care independently, and to enable them to remain safely in the community† (Panasci, 2009, p.190). The writer received consent from the Home Support Team Manager from the Prince Albert Park land Health Region (PAPHR) who will be referred to as O.S. By conducting an interview in conjunction with O.S, the writer gained insight into the manager’s role, challenges, and ensuring OH&S practices. For the all-inclusive interview refer to Appendix A. This paper will depict the essence of OH&S, the manager and writer’s approaches and strategies to resolving the challenges. Management Challenge The challenge that was the focus of the interview was OH&S in a home care environment and the difficulties associated with the implementation of minimizing occupational hazards. OH&S prevents and protects employees from workplace hazards (Chadwick & Doyle, 2008). The six types of health and safety hazards are biological, chemical, ergonomic, physical, psychosocial, and safety (Chadwick &... ...hem and if they decide not to use them, the manager could give a verbal warning for the first incident and for the second incident, give a written warning. The manager could also use this tactic with rock salt or kitty litter (Fox, 2011). Conclusion The goal of maintaining a safe environment for both the workers and clients in home care is key. This goal is a constant issue in home care; with the most significant hazards indentified are violence and environmental hazards that were addressed. O.S’s management philosophy was par with what literature was explaining. The writer explains how having a constant evaluatory tool may help with maintaining a safe environment for both client and staff. Most importantly, one of the nursing values and ethical responsibilities is, â€Å"providing safe, compassionate, competent and ethical care† (Code of Ethics, 2008, p. 8).

Profile Of An Adult Numeracy Learner

PA is attending an adult numeracy class because he was sent by his employer. His employer completed his Level 2 National Test last year and is now insisting that all his employees follow suit. Non-completion will result in no promotion and no annual pay rise Initial assessment The key implications here are that PA is currently working at Entry Level 3 in most numeric areas. He should be able to increase his ability level and undertake Level 1 without too many problems. However he needs to achieve Level 2 in order to gain his pay rise and promotion so this will put him under a lot of preasure and additional stress. According to Tennant (1988), PA, as a 36 year old, is in his midlife transitional period and will be â€Å"Adopting a changing time perspective and revising career plans†; this can be substantiated as PA is attending a numeracy course because of changes that are taking place at work. His employer has stated that the course must be completed and the Level 2 National Test must be passed or PA will not receive a promotion or his annual pay rise. This is an unusual situation, as according to Charnley & Jones (1987), â€Å"Getting a pay rise as a direct result of tuition is extremely rare†. Patterns of adult learning reflect class divisions in society and the different expectations and perceptions resulting from those divisions. Factors such as social class, gender and race impact on decisions to learn, as each is associated with particular cultural pressures and norms. According to Maslow (1973) once physiological needs have been met safety or security becomes predominant. In other words, there is a need for self-preservation and a common concern for the future e. g. , will we be able to maintain our property and our job in order to provide shelter and food tomorrow and the next day? It is likely that this is the stage PA is at particularly as he knows that if he does not pass the relevant exams he will not get a pay rise or promotion. Peer and reference group influences can also be extremely strong (Evans, 2000). People who are habitual learners tend to belong to groups where education is seen as a normal activity. They also tend to be involved in other forms of social participation. Non-learners belong to groups for whom engaging in learning is not part of normal behaviour – this is certainly true of PA who would not have engaged initially in numeracy earning through his own choice, and who, until recently would not engage in any social activity e. g. attending a school fund raising evening. Among male manual workers, for example, there is a strong culture of group conformity and solidarity. To engage in education that is not immediately job-related is seen as what women or children do and is, therefore, not a masculine activity (McGivney, 1996). Social class continues to be the key discriminator in understanding participation in learning. Over half of all upper and middle class (AB) respondents are current or recent learners, compared with one-third of the skilled working class (C2) and one quarter of unskilled working class people and people on limited incomes (Gallup Survey 1996). However, what and how much is learned can be influenced by the learner's motivation (NIACE, 1997) and, from my own experiences within the post-compulsory education sector, I would have to agree with this. However, motivation to learn could be, in turn, influenced by an individual's emotional states, beliefs, interests and goals, and habits of thinking. PA's current, positive, beliefs about himself as a learner and the nature of learning appear to have had a marked influence on his motivation. It could be said that the rich internal world of thoughts, beliefs, goals, and expectations for success or failure may enhance or interfere with the learner's quality of thinking and information processing. Motivational and emotional factors may also influence both the quality of his thinking and information processing as well as his individual motivation to learn. Positive emotions, such as curiosity, generally enhance motivation and facilitate learning and performance. Mild anxiety can also enhance learning and performance by focusing the learner's attention on a particular task. However, intense negative emotions (e. g. , anxiety, panic, rage, insecurity) and related thoughts (e. g. , worrying about competence, ruminating about failure, fearing punishment, ridicule, or stigmatising labels) generally detract from motivation, interfere with learning, and contribute to low performance (Evans, 2000). This could be seen during PA's recent Numeracy Level 1 National Test when he experienced mild anxiety, but was extremely motivated and positive about the experience and his ability – and he passed first time! Motivation is, therefore, not a simple issue, since individual motives and action are strongly affected by where people are located (socially, culturally and spatially) and the constraints or incentives that operate on their choices (NIACE). PA blames his current lack of knowledge and qualifications in numeracy on his underachievement at school. If we look more closely it becomes apparent that, because of his age, PA would have been attending school during the 1970's and 1980's. It was during this time that the early underachievement of boys first became evident, as large scale studies of children's achievements at Primary school pointed to the fact that girls consistently out-performed boys (Myers, 2000). Therefore there was a shift away from public concern about girls' achievement to boys' achievement, or underachievement, at school in exams. The concern about ‘boys' underachievement' has been characterised in educational policy initiatives at national, local and school levels, most significantly in the imposition of the national literacy and numeracy strategy (Barrs and Pidgeon 1998). However, overall improvements in achievement are often ignored and gender differences are ascribed to the detrimental effects of ‘the feminisation of teaching' (Epstein et al, 1998). The concern for boys' underachievement was highlighted by Murphy and Elwood (1998) who argued that improvement in female achievement is not shared by girls from low socio-economic backgrounds and may not be apparent in some subjects. Similarly, Epstein et al (1998) questioned the global application of the category of boys' underachievement' by asking, ‘†¦ hich boys? At what stages of education? †¦ according to what criteria? ‘ We could say that by definition, gender roles are the social norms that dictate what is socially appropriate male and female behaviour (Tobias, 1997), and are part of the socialisation process of human beings. These roles are also influenced by each individual's cultural and economic background (Tobias, 1997). It could be said that gender roles influence women and men in virtually every area of life, including family and occupation. This is certainly true for PA, who feels that it is his duty to provide for his family and to have the greater earning capacity regardless of his lack of formal qualifications. Everyone recognises that there are significant differences between male and female, even if they are only physical. However, others see not only the physical but also the social, emotional and intellectual differences. In addition there is belief that, by the age of sixteen, females have matured more than boys by up to as much as two years (Skelton, 2001). This could mean that girls have an advantage by viewing exams in a far more responsible way and recognising the seriousness and importance of the academic and career choices in the future. PA agrees with this as he did not take his schooling seriously and, quite possibly due to the fact that PA knew he was underachieving and he was unmotivated, he left school at 16 with no formal qualifications. He has only recently started to regret his actions. The figures from the 1996 Gallup survey could also be used to illustrate this as more adult men (25%) are currently learning compare to adult women (21%). Now that he is within the adult education sector, PA appears to see learning numeracy as a process of liberation. This may be because PA now feels that the educational process is not static and that his learning is a cultural action for freedom. It no longer involves one person teaching another, but rather people working with each other to ensure each individual reaches their potential. This was also the understanding of Bruner (1973), who suggested that learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas based upon their current / past knowledge. Adult learners also appear to be more receptive to learning if there is a context to the learning. Teaching adults numerical skills which ‘transfer' means exposing â€Å"students to different contexts which have the same mathematical content† (Rees and Barr, 1984) e. g. electrical work, decorating, shopping or linked to employment. This is certainly true for PA who works better, and appears to have a deeper understanding, when he can see there is a relevance and context to what he is learning. According to Bruner (1973), the teacher and student should engage in active dialogue and the task of the teacher is to translate information to be learned into a format appropriate to the learners' current state of understanding. During numeracy there are so many ways of doing and explaining one thing, one example would be the various descriptions used for the actions of ‘add' and ‘subtract', another example would be the various methods of teaching long multiplication. In addition, Bruner (1973) stated that the curriculum should be organised in a spiral manner, so that the student continually builds upon what they have already learned, â€Å"The concept of prime numbers appears to be more readily grasped when the learner, through construction, discovers certain handfuls of beans cannot be laid out in completed rows and columns† (Bruner, 1973). When working with PA, as for all my learners, I ensure that I question his current method and understanding of each numeric topic before I go into the topic in depth. This way I am constantly building on his current knowledge and understanding. A high percentage of the learners at Rochford Adult Community College are White British and PA falls into this group, ‘Rochford has one of the lowest ethnic minority populations, well below half of the national average' (Rochford District Council, 2005). However, according to the Home Office's Commission for Racial Equality, 2002, the United Kingdom is a changing society and these socio-economic changes are reflected in our growing cultural and ethnic diversity. These changes bring many gains, but sometimes there are tensions and divisions that may lead to fracturing within, and across, local areas and communities. However, whatever the nature of community divisions, the basis of the solution is often the same; community cohesion. The Home Office's Commission for Racial Equality, 2002, suggests that community cohesion may be achieved by raising awareness and understanding and developing shared values with mutual trust and respect. The Home Office describes a cohesive community as one where there is common vision, a sense of belonging, where diversity is valued and where there are similar life opportunities with â€Å"†¦ strong and positive relationships being developed between people from different backgrounds†¦ in colleges and in schools†¦ † (www. homeoffice. gov. uk, 2003). This is also the ethos of Essex County Council and consequently Castle Point and Rochford Adult Community College (www. essexcc. gov. uk, 2005).

Essay about Public and Private Management - 1800 Words

Unlike many of the other writing assignments done thus far, this paper will be providing brief synopses for several essays on issues involved with the study of public management. Although it might be possible to state that the ideas and theories presented in these texts are either true or false, it will be the goal of this writing to take the simple approach and focus on the thoughts that are presented are still relevant in modern practice of public management. However, it is first important to point out that even today there is no aggregated view for weighing or measuring the success of public managers. This is because in part due to the various ways in which the agencies manage themselves, for example whether or not they chose to follow†¦show more content†¦In addition, he highlights several areas in which the academic thinkers were struggling with and arguing over. Allison point out everything from the similarities of â€Å"How are Public and Private Management Alike?,â €  to charting out the functions of general management, and to the ‘current’ research being done to answer several questions that these topics have been brought up since Woodrow Wilson now canonized first article on the subject (1979,p 397) (1887). Allison’s call for research in this field is still greatly needed and sought after today as we shift from one management style to another, seemingly distinctive, in today’s public agencies. One example of the reason that this research is needed can be found in comparing the resent style swing to the NPR, from the more ‘traditional’ management style outlines in Louis Brownlow, Charles E. Merriam, and Luther Gulick essay, â€Å"Report of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management† (1937). In their essay, they were working under the assumption that the management side of public administration could be, and was, separate from the political decisions and policies that directs the public service sector. Under this assumption, they crusaded for more power and control over the public management process, on the behave of the executive branch. Some of their ideas included allowing the president to hire powerless, sector concentrated,Show MoreRelatedPublic And Private Management : Are They Fundamentally Alike? 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