When people must flee their homes due to persecution or conflict, they embark on a journey from loss toward safety that is a global concern and the resettlement country's responsibility. Refugees experience stressors as they secure basic needs such as adequate nutrition, healthcare, transportation, housing, education, and income-generating activities. For refugee women, these stressors are further exacerbated by gender-related roles and experiences. Addressing the unique healthcare needs of refugee women is vital to their well-being as they resettle into life in the United States. Access to care that is provided with cultural humility and fosters trust is critical. Policies are needed that expand health literacy programs and interpreting services, grow, diversify, and train the physical healthcare workforce, grow and diversify the mental healthcare workforce, expand Medicaid coverage in all 50 states, develop and fund peer-to-peer education programs for refugee women, finance access to care and programmatic services, and expand federal funding toward refugee health research.
In the wake of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, many nursing organizations asserted that "abortion is health care" and access to it must be protected. Such a phrase makes clear claims about the meanings of "health" and "care." How one defines these terms gives decisive direction to how a nurse must practice regarding not just elective abortion but also myriad interventions that divide bioethicists, including gender affirmative care, cosmetic surgery, and euthanasia. We consider the issue of elective abortion to illustrate the nature of disputes about the scope and limits of professional nursing. We describe two competing intuitions about the nature of health care namely that health care is either for (a) health, objectively defined or (b) well-being, patient defined. We discuss how these intuitions lead to different understandings of the intelligibility of the phrase "abortion is health care" and the implications for ethical discourse within professional nursing.
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted nurses' well-being and the transition of new nurses into the workplace. The National Academy of Medicine and American Nurses Foundation has announced the need to prioritize well-being research.
Purpose: To explore new nurses' perspectives related to factors that influenced their well-being and transition to practice.
Methods: New graduate nurses (1-2years post graduation) in Hawaii were invited to participate in a qualitative study, September 2023.
Discussion: Participants (N = 25) were predominantly female (84%), Asian (80%), and had 1year of experience (76%). Participants described the effect of the pandemic on their well-being, individual factors they needed to develop, external factors that were barriers or facilitators, and considerations for future interventions to support well-being and transition to practice.
Conclusion: The findings highlighted components of interventions needed in the academic and professional setting to support new nurses' successful and sustained transition to the workplace.