Florence’s Candle: Educating theMillennial Nursing Studentnuf_186 157..159

Judith Bonaduce, RN, PhD Candidate, and Beth Quigley, RN, MSN, CRNP

Judith Bonaduce, RN, PhD Candidate, and Beth Quigley, RN, MSN, CRNP, are currently Associate Course Directors in theFamily and Community Health Division of the Penn School of Nursing.

KeywordsFlorence’s Candle, Millenialstudent, technology, discovery,coming together as a nation

Correspondencebonaduce@nursing.upenn.edu andquigley@nursing.upenn.edu, with acopy to the Editor:nursingforum@gmail.com

Florence Nightingale’s Candle serves as a symbol of the nursing profes-sion. It is utilized in different venues, including nursing education. TheMillenial students in today’s higher education setting, particularly innursing, would benefit from applying its symbolism in the classroom andin their nursing careers. The concepts of technology, discovery, andcoming together as a nation are discussed as they relate to nursingeducation and to Florence’s candle of caring.

Florence’s Candle

My life as a nurse has given me a new appreciationof candles. It all started when I took the NightingalePledge, and held that candle. From that moment on,nursing for me has been more than a profession. It hasbeen, and is, a journey of care—lit by a candle. Lewis(2002) stated that, “Because of their association withlight in the darkness, candles can indicate somethingof a spiritual significance—protection in the darkness,unseen, and guidance through the unknown” (p.283). Certainly, the soldiers at Crimea felt thatsomeone cared when they saw the light of Florence’scandle advancing toward them in the darkness.

Just like Florence, the original candle-symbolmaker, my candle has been used in unusual places: inshelters, prisons, subsidized housing projects, drugrehabs, in hospitals where a police guard stood at thedoor of my patient’s room, and in darkly lit homes. Ihave mentored students in my career who believedthat they had no need of the candle, who believedthey could perform nursing without its light, and thatthey burned brightly on their own without it. It hasbecome part of my nursing to mentor students, in acaring way, and to care for them so that they, in turn,will care for others. This can be especially challengingwhen teaching the millennial student.

The Millennial Student

Pardue and Morgan (2008) admit that nothing is“traditional” about these “18- to 24-year-old stu-dents . . . yet that is the term used in academe todescribe students who enter higher education justout of high school” (p. 74). They have been describedas “technologically competent, effortless with cellphones, PDAs and iPods,” and “optimistic, assertive,positive, friendly, cooperative team players who gravi-tate toward group activities” (Pardue & Morgan, p.74). Mikah Giffin, 17, stated, “Our generation isn’t allabout sex, drugs, and violence. It’s about technology,discovery, and coming together as a nation” (Howe &Strauss, 2000, p. 3).

Technology: Lighting a Candle Is a Prayer

There are two ways of spreading light: to be thecandle or the mirror that reflects it.Edith Wharton

(The Quotations Page, n.d.)

At times, instructors are prone to follow methodsthat are most familiar, or those that were used to teachthem when they were in school (Bonaduce, 2009).Yim (2009) stated, “It is obvious that technologychanges culture, and thus impacts the effectiveness ofcommunication” (p. 8). The use of technology while

AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR NURSING

157© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Nursing Forum Volume 46, No. 3, July-September 2011

teaching is a funny thing: the instructor is at the frontof the room praying and trying to figure out how towork the technology, and the students are in the audi-ence groaning, “Can somebody please help her upthere?” (Bonaduce, 2009).

As “a therapeutic nurse-patient relationship is thefoundation of nursing care” (Clinical Nursing Skills andTechniques, 2010), a therapeutic instructor–studentrelationship is the basis of a working classroom.Instructors wonder if they are reaching their studentsand about newer, better ways of communicating in theclassroom when they look out and see students textmessaging, twittering, and trying to look like they arenot using their cell phone. Good communication is inthe middle—of our own past learning and the stu-dent’s present-day learning, needing to be succinctlydelivered now more than ever. As the culture withinsociety and the classroom has changed, nursinginstructors need to be aware that there are differencesbetween their own way of thinking and the thinkingof their millennial students, who are technologicallydriven.

Discovery: Lighting a Candle Is a Parable

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.William Arthur Ward

(The Quotations Page, n.d.)

In 1993, the National League for Nursing “urgedthat caring be incorporated in nursing curricula as afocus of nursing education” (Adamski, Parsons, &Hooper, 2009, p. 358). One might ask, “How does anursing instructor in the classroom communicate tomillennial students in a caring way, in the presence ofoverwhelming technology, which the instructor maynot fully understand, so that students, may in turn,initiate caring for their clients?” Standing in front of aclassroom of millennial nursing students may seemdaunting to a nursing instructor. However, as nursinginstructors, we need to guard against losing theessence of the subject matter (and of nursing) becausewe are so heavily concentrating on delivering thelecture content via the latest technology in the class-room. Pardue and Morgan (2008) have stated thatMillennials “often have difficulty communicatingthrough traditional channels and do not like to read orwrite” (p. 74). Instructors are often uncomfortablewhen Millennials ask questions that the instructorcannot immediately answer in the classroom. Oneauthor of this paper has asked the student expressing

the question, “Why don’t you look that up for us onyour PDA and let us know what you find?” There isnothing wrong with putting the technology, which thestudents have in their own hands, in the classroom, towork in the classroom real-time.

Yim (2009) stated that, “It is easy to think thatmore needs to be taught to students. In fact, we mayneed to do the opposite” (p. 8). The “opposite” here,regarding nursing, may be a re-emphasis on a caringmodel, on therapeutic use of the nursing self, fromthe instructor to the student, and subsequently, fromthe student to the client in need of caring. Millennialstudents, who have been cared for by “helicopter”parents, who “want to be directly and constantlyinvolved in their children’s college experience”(Fitzgerald, 2006, p. 1), may not need more or dif-ferent teaching, but the instillation of a caring modelin their nursing curricula, which they will need toemulate in their nursing profession. Bevis, in theseminal work, “Toward a Caring Curriculum” (Bevis& Watson, 2000), has espoused that a “national effortmust be mounted to deinstitutionalize the behavior-ist model” (p. 2), which focuses primarily on meetingobjectives, and replace it with a caring curriculumthat would produce nursing graduates that are “moreresponsive to societal needs,” and “more successful inhumanizing the highly technological milieus ofhealth care” (p. 1). Nursing needs to re-discover itselfin a highly technological classroom, re-ground itselfin a caring paradigm within that classroom, andtransmit this knowledge of caring to Millennial stu-dents for use in their profession. An excellent oppor-tunity in the community classroom would be for themillennial student, who is accustomed to workingwith groups, to enact a life-like skit in the front of aclassroom of peers. A wonderful example of this isBonaduce’s enactment of a community health visitby students in front of their peers in the classroom(Bonaduce, 2009). Millennial students enact a skit;answer questions that follow the skit, critique theinteraction of characters within the skit, and they doall this spontaneously without preparation, andwithout writing anything down or taking notes. Stu-dents are free during this whole process to ask ques-tions or make comments to their peers within theclassroom setting. Yim (2009) stated, “We try tobreak the students from thinking that asking for helpor giving help to a classmate is cheating” (p. 8). Nodoubt we want independent practitioners coming outat the other end of their expensive education.However, a very knowledgeable practitioner, without

Florence’s Candle: Educating the Millennial Nursing Student J. Bonaduce and B. Quigley

158© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Nursing Forum Volume 46, No. 3, July-September 2011

a heart, who does not comprehend therapeutic useof the nursing self, is cheating himself, the student,and ultimately, the client, in the process.

A parable has been defined as a tale that demon-strates a moral attitude (Webster’s 9th Collegiate Dic-tionary, 1983). A pertinent parable that relates to thisway of thinking in the classroom may be: doing untoothers what one wishes done for oneself. The nursinginstructor’s process of discovery in the classroom, withthe millennial student takes the nurse back to thebasics and to the Golden Rule. The instructor takes onmore of an “interventionist role” in the classroom(McWilliam, 2008, p. 263). The instructor has movedfrom the Sage on the Stage, to the Guide fromthe Side, and is now a Meddler in the Middle(McWilliam).

Coming Together as a Nation: Lighting aCandle Is a Symbol

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendidtorch which I have got a hold of for the moment,and I want to make it burn as brightly as possiblebefore handing it onto future generations.

(George Bernard Shaw, The Quotations Page,n.d.)

Elam, Stratton, and Gibson (2007) have stated thatsome sources “fear” that because of the millennialstudents’ overuse of “communications technology,”they may be deficient in interpersonal skills (p. 22).This aspect of the millennial student is of particularconcern in nursing, which is a personal profession thatdepends on the good interpersonal skills of the nursewhen assessing, referring, teaching, or applying thera-peutic use of self to the client (Bonaduce and Ioli,2009). One of the Competencies stated in the NationalLeague for Nursing Core Competencies of Nurse Edu-cators states that the Nurse Educator engages in lifelonglearning activities. One wonders what better way therecould be for the instructor to engage in a lifelonglearning activity than to stay abreast of their students,their needs, and their ways of learning. The Millennialstudents’ ways may be a bit different than the ways oftheir Traditionalist, Baby-Boomer, or Generation Xinstructors, but they are in our classroom for the samereason that we sat in their seats years ago—to becomegood nurses. They are also there to learn about becom-ing agents of change in the world, as we model to them

our own change in adapting to their way of learningand thinking.

A symbol can be a powerful representation of aword, a life, a value, or a goal. Florence’s candle stillprovides a symbol for today’s Millennial nursingstudent; to be, as Gandhi stated, “the change theywant to see in the world” (The Words and Inspirationof Mahatma Gandhi, 2009), as they pass their nursingknowledge to the next generation.

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References

Adamski, M., Parsons, V., & Hooper, C. (2009). Internalizingthe concept of caring: An examination of student percep-tions when nurses share their stories. Nursing EducationPerspectives, 30(6), 358–361.

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Bonaduce, J., & Ioli, J. (2009). The ARTT Model: A model fornursing care utilized by students within a subsidized housingdevelopment. Manuscript awaiting publication.

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J. Bonaduce and B. Quigley Florence’s Candle: Educating the Millennial Nursing Student

159© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Nursing Forum Volume 46, No. 3, July-September 2011