Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Defending the 'Call' Chicago, 111. To the Editors: Your editorial [April 20] on the Call to Action's church reform pastoral letter seemed to say, "Yes, we agree with almost...
...It is a deeply embedded imperative that represents the essence of nursing...
...Serials Data program No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...bank...
...Models that integrate care-providing services and cure-oriented medical services are more cost-effective than the prevailing system...
...It is true that young people walk into the offices of the Call to Action as into Commonweal's because they identify with our sensibilities and our agendas...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...We can't really see what axis we're on as we spin along, but over the years CTA has had lots of revolving energy around reflection and action, justice in society and justice in the church, looking back and looking ahead, cooperation and critique, hope and humor...
...The need to preserve the Eucharist through expanding the priesthood is central in our letter...
...And they do...
...But the attempt to stifle the Spirit and stuff it in a box must be conhonted and resisted in every age...
...We gain these insights because we are able to "be with" individuals and families during long periods of intense need...
...Your twin concerns of Catholic identity and sense of the sacred find their most profound expression in the Eucharist, whose very existence is threatened by a priest shortage due to restrictions on who can be priests...
...Our references to the "wobbly" liberal-conservative axis and the next several generations are not "mysterious declarations" so much as intuitions that pre-Vatican II Catholics need to speak as much about why to love and treasure the church as about what needs changing...
...Most physicians will not jump ship, abandoning the $ 120,000 median salary they earn by providing curative services in exchange for the salaries of nurse care-givers...
...The most cost-effective models have nurses as the keystone providers...
...They persist in efforts to develop a relationship with the pregnant thirteen-yearold in order to break the cycle of abuse and neglect...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...Also, Catholic identity and sense of the sacred is precisely why many people are enthusiastic about the letter...
...Young people commit to our vision because our justice focus is consistent...
...They provide safe passage to the dying, often through long, torturous vigils with the dying and their families...
...Liberals, in their concern to bring about change, tend to leave the former task to conservatives, who, in their concern to stop change, seem sometimes to love the church for the wrong reasons...
...in trying to fulfill their duty to care, she wrote, nurses "have confronted a series of limitations, of imagination, of cultural ideology, of economics, ultimately of political power...
...Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest and Book Review Index...
...identity and work...
...Canada, $34...
...for them, caring has never been a consolation prize...
...Your commentary downplays the importance of the "justice in the church" issue among young people, but CTA's experience over thirteen years with young adult volunteers who give a year of their lives to us indicates otherwise...
...Nurses have always been called on to respond to the vulnerability of others...
...Canada, $61...
...The dilemma this has created for nurses was pointed out by Susan Reverby, professor of women's studies at Wellesley, in a book-length study...
...I believe this immersion in the life experience of others facilitates the development of an ethic of care...
...Good...
...U.S., $57...
...Caring simply does not have a high dollar value in our society...
...both physicians and nurses, when asked, will exclaim that they care...
...Special two-yeai rate...
...Callahan sees medicine as failing to educate students for caring...
...Obviously, not all nurses perfectly fulfill the ideals of their profession...
...bank.Order or b) check on a U.S...
...Nurses spend shifts, work-weeks, months, even years in significant and intensely personal interaction with those in need...
...That said, we welcome the critique and hope that whatever fine tuning the statement might need won't prevent signatures from many who stand in solidarity with us on the basic content...
...Yet medicine continues to place roadblocks in the way...
...Institutionally, however, society and the health system do not recognize the "primacy of caring," and will not until through legislation and policy changes we empower nursing to realize its potential...
...the editors Nurses & care Durham, N.H...
...To the Editors: I was challenged and provoked by Daniel Callahan's essay on "The Primacy of Caring" [February 23], but, as a professor of nursing, I was disappointed that in his only reference to nurses the author wrote: "Too often it is nurses who are expected to provide caring, however...
...dollars by International Money Order or b) check on a U.S...
...The letter, you assert, does not set boundaries on Catholic identity...
...to the cancer patient in pain...
...culture two or whatever other set of terms is current...
...But we all need to worry over the young who do not walk through anybody's door, who do not identify with any Catholic sensibility or agenda...
...foreign, $67...
...All this has a bearing on Callahan's description of the costs of medicine...
...foreign, $37...
...The problem is rather that the work of care has been and is undervalued in our (Continued on page 397) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 370) society not just in the field of health but universally, in the home and in other occupations...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., $32...
...As for your somewhat mysterious declaration that the liberal-conservative axis is "wobbling," you do not suggest what new polarities or convergences have replaced it...
...It is essential for all health workers to identify themselves as caring persons...
...To sign or not to sign the "Call to Action" was and remains a close call for us as for many others who wrote [Correspondence, June 1...
...yet the letter explicitly deals with fundamental virtues like justice, equity, and reasonableness in the internal organization of the church...
...Our reward is profound insight into the human condition...
...giving care, knowledgeably and compassionately, is what nurses are educated to do and want to do...
...We're convinced that now is the time for all concerned Catholics to speak out together on these issues...
...How could you possibly expect it to attempt such a prodigious undertaking...
...Why else would they be fighting the good fight to make the institution healthy again...
...Copyright © 1990 Commonweal Foundation...
...Time and again, national and international studies have demonstrated the cost effectiveness of using nurses to provide most primary care services...
...The editors reply: We welcome the Daleys' response and rejoinder...
...Care has two aspects, as the social policy analyst Hilary Graham has pointed out...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid ir U.S...
...Clearly this is a conversation that needs to continue and we look forward to hearing more voices...
...GENE ELIZABETH HARKLESS, R.N...
...It's painfully clear that the absence of such virtues is precisely what deters many contemporary people of goodwill from probing the church for the sacred message it contains and offers...
...For copies of the statement write Call to Action, 3900 N. Lawndale, Chicago, Illinois 60618, or call 312-604-0400...
...conservative or culture one vs...
...DAN DALEY & SHEILA DALEY The writers are co-directors of Call to Action...
...The reason, I suggest, is that physicians and surgeons pursuing cure do not "dwell with" the individuals and families in need of care, not, at least, to the extent and in the depth that nurses do...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 and on Microfiche from Bell & Howell, Wooster, Ohio 44691...
...It is not improper that physicians, obeying a complementary but different imperative, put caring in second place, below the work of cure...
...From a nursing perspective, there is nothing wrong with placing this expectation with the nursing profession...
...Single copy, $1.50...
...But, as Daniel Callahan wrote, the work of giving care must be valued...
...You can call the perennial conflict liberal vs...
...Those of us who make our livelihood from the work of care know that lucrative financial awards are not to be had...
...If Callahan's vision is to be realized, if we are to institute a compassionate health care system, an essential step will be to empower the nursing profession...
...They clean blood, feces, and urine off the laboring woman about to give birth...
...and at additional offices...
...Another is the geriatric nurse practitioner who can spend significant time assessing and planning for the care needs of long-term nursing home residents because this is her long-term work and not just part of a larger medical practice...
...The writer is assistant professor in the department of nursing, University of New Hampshire...
...That is what the CTA letter does...
...equally, not all physicians undervalue the work of care and the contribution of nurses...
...They celebrate the AIDS patient's birthday as a substitute for the family who will not...
...Secondly, you say that the letter does not have a "sense of the sacred...
...They take the time to befriend the elderly husband of the confused Alzheimer patient...
...So the reader is left in a state of frustrated befuddlement...
...To the Editors: Your editorial [April 20] on the Call to Action's church reform pastoral letter seemed to say, "Yes, we agree with almost everything the letter said, but after much thought and meditation we have come up with some things it doesn't say and therefore we can't endorse it...
...An example is the nurse practitioner in primary care who can take forty-five minutes to discuss sexuality and responsibility with a young woman because she is simply not required to generate the revenue expected of physicians...
...To continue that discussion briefly: The issues included in the "Call" may all be necessary but together they are not, in our view, sufficient for what lies ahead...
...What the letter says is that many of the conclusions of serious ecumenical scholars and theologians have been relegated to bookshelves since Vatican II, and this is a tragedy...
...Commonweal seems to agree with that...
...They provide comfort at 3 a.m...
...As the health system is now structured, however, power and authority are disproportionately given to curative practitioners...
Vol. 117 • June 1990 • No. 12
