Question

1. 1. What theme have you found most relevant to your understanding of disabilities? This relevance may be something that you hope to avoid or emulate in your future work with those with disabilities.
   1. What era the history do you find most disturbing?   What ongoing “residual threads” of this history are still apparent today?  What can you do to eradicate these threads?

What historical trend would you like to emulate in your future professional work?  How do you envision accomplishing this?

Answer 1

Identity and Disability

Powerful stories leave lasting impressions. Perhaps reading and reflecting on disability narratives can encourage some individuals with disabilities to reflect on their own disability identities. Some may elect to forge closer ties with the disability community while others may consider whether their own journeys and stories contain elements of pride, affirmation, self-worth or some other aspect of disability identity. Individuals who develop a chronic disability later in life might well find the identities portrayed within some narratives to be a helpful resource for navigating the initial phases of disability or the experience of rehabilitation therapy. Family members, caregivers and allies of people with disabilities, too, can benefit from learning about disability identity and the themes represented within disability narratives. By reading, listening to and reflecting on the content of people’s stories, rehabilitation researchers, practitioners and other professionals can learn to recognize disability identity as an authentic and important aspect of the social psychology of disability.

Communal attachment. A recurring theme in the formation of disability identity is the importance of community, where people with disabilities are actively engaged with their peers due to common experience. Some research suggests that a sense of communal attachment, a community-based form of identity integration, is like “coming home” for many people with disabilities.

Affirmation of disability. A second personal identity factor is that many people are disposed towards the affirmation of disability. Personal affirmation of disabilityis a way to feel included in society by having the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens, to be recognized and treated like everyone else within a group or society more generally.

Disability identity politics and activism.Three themes are relevant to disability identity as understood within psychological contexts where politics and activism emerge: self-worth, pride and awareness of discrimination. Self-worth, the idea that one values oneself, is dependent on an individual’s ability to perform activities or tasks viewed as important to the self, others and society more generally (e.g., performing activities of daily living). A sense of self-worth enables people with disabilities to see themselves as possessing the same worth as individuals who have not experienced a disability. Distinct from self-worth, pride refers to being proud of one’s identity and, in the process, acknowledging possessing a socially-devalued quality, such as a mental or a physical disability. Pride encourages people with disabilities to “claim” rather than deny or mask disability. The third domain, discrimination, entails awareness and recognition of the reality that people with disabilities are often the targets of biased, prejudiced and unfair treatment within daily life. In the short run, such negative attitudes are “invisible barriers” during rehabilitation, whereas in the long run such prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviors serve as ongoing disruptions to daily living.

Personal meaning and disability. Finding meaning, entailing searching for significance and finding benefits associated with disability, is an important aspect of disability identity because it can represent personal acceptance. Constructive acceptance of one’s life situation, then, can solidify the meaning of disability while promoting a favorable disability identity. Searching for meaning following the onset of disability often results in the discovery of a “silver lining.”

As an historian, the ONLY part of American history that I find “disturbing,” is recent events.

The election of so many people who pay lip service to the Constitution, and then ignore it for personal profit, combined with the number of people in powerful positions who consider blatant corruption throughout the Federal government to be acceptable (as long as the corrupt people are members of the party in power), and who don’t care that foreign interests are actively interfering with our electoral and communications systems, means that a LOT of very bad things are on the immediate horizon.

The reason why I am not “disturbed” by more remote history, is that it is no longer what is going on here. No need to be “disturbed” by it, regardless of how nasty things may have been.

The rapid growth of Entrepreneurship in Nigeria since 1999 is indicative of the fact that it plays an integral role in the development of the Nigerian economy. New ventures, start up, innovation, systems thinking and human centered design now serve as pillars for the Nigerian entrepreneur in a competitive business world. However, inadequate attention is given as to how leadership can play a pivotal role in ensuring that these enterprises remain a going concern. This paper explores existing leadership practise in the Nigerian entrepreneurial ecosystem and investigates if servant leadership could ever be applicable. This paper recognizes the significance of bringing into the discourse the context of the culture dimension in identifying leadership possibilities in this Sub-Saharan growing economy. In critically evaluating the servant leadership theory, the study advocates that a new development in understanding this theory in relation to the Nigerian entrepreneur is to explore the Ubuntu leadership philosophy.

The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system.

At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year.

Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles -- including limits on nurses' scope of practice -- should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care.

In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.