This chapter reviews prevention, including genetic counseling. It discusses genetic testing for diagnosis as opposed to screening and the treatment for genetic disease. Methods of prevention begin with education of the public and health care professionals and identification of those at risk. Genetic counseling is the process of helping people understand and adapt to the medical, psychological, and familial implications of genetic contributions to disease. The malignant cells often exhibit aneuploidy as well as translocations that are found only within the tumor cells. Genetic errors that arise from specific cell lines are somatic mutations. It is suggested that there is a thorough collection of family, genetic, and medical history for children entering the adoption process. Nurses may play a variety of roles in genetic counseling that reflect their preparation, area of practice, primary functions, and setting. The chapter explains the incidence of chromosome abnormalities.

This chapter provides a guide to conducting a life history from conceptualization to dissemination. Life history is used to explain an individual’s understanding of social events, movements, and political causes, that is, how individual members of groups or institutions see certain events and how they experience and interpret those events. As it is unlikely that nurses will be conducting traditional fieldwork to gather life histories because of the extensive periods of time involved, the chapter describes the process for collecting focused life histories by researchers whose only purpose is to document the story of the participant and not to frame this life history within a broader ethnography. It considers life history as a sociocultural methodology and leave oral history on historical research and life review to the one on clinical literature.

The CARES tool, in addition to assisting nurses with delivery of evidence-based care of the dying and viewing the care of the dying as an acute event, also needed to be portable and readily accessible. An extensive review of the literature found the most basic common needs of the dying included pain management and comfort measures, breathing assistance, control of delirium, emotional and spiritual support, and self-care for caregivers. This chapter discusses some issues: Nurses receive little to no education on care of the dying and feel they have minimal time to attend in-services, and can be resistant to learning new skills; communication is the foundation for end-of-life care; the nurses’ past personal and professional experiences with death can greatly impact the care they provide dying patients and their families. These issues and concerns helped organize and shape the final version of the CARES tool.

Embracing the role of a nurse practitioner with a doctorate in nursing practice (DNP) requires taking on the additional challenge of acting as an effective change agent. A DNP’s primary role is to act as a bridge between research and the bedside nurse. A strong clinical background assists in translating research findings into realistic evidence-based practices that nurses can readily incorporate into their daily routines. Nurses needed to learn what resources were available to meet the specific needs of the dying and how to promote a peaceful death. The CARES tool attempts to give some sense of order and structure to the care of the dying. The CARES tool is based on the immense educational resources provided by experts from the End-of-Life National Education Consortium (ELNEC), the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care, and from evidence-based literature reviews.

Nursing practice is a symbiotic relationship between the art and science of professional care. One cannot exist in isolation from the other. Nurses are inclined to connect the art of nursing with terms such as compassion, caring attitudes, the therapeutic relationship, presence, professionalism, advocacy, and competence, otherwise known as the “soft or caring side of nursing”. The greatest threat to the disappearance of the art of nursing lies with the perceived “big three”: time, fiscal restraint, and failure of the system to support a full staff of nurses, so those employed are working at full capacity. It is important to recognize that different practice settings have varying needs. One size does not fit all. Yet the requirements for nursing assessments, developing a plan of care, coordinating care with other health care providers, implementing interventions, and evaluating care outcomes are a requirement of all.

The caring nature striven for is that which has the potential to “gently shake the world”, as Gandhi said, and to move healthcare toward the whole-person, whole-planet healing that Nightingale. This work continues to be an invitation to pause, intentionally create space for reflection and intention, and move into the world with a refined sense of purpose, presence, and authentic power. Caring Science is not the property of a particular profession or system; it does not belong to the annals of nursing any more than the halls of medicine, finance, or law. Nurses have simply been granted the privilege of ushering the texture of its message into the stratosphere; a nursing lens has been the kaleidoscope of sacred human interaction chosen for this tender phase of its being and becoming.

This chapter describes the state of Caring Science nursing practice in Peru. It discusses how performance improvement initiatives contribute to the success of advancing nursing as a caring discipline. The chapter is the narrative, lived experience of a Peruvian American nurse who reflects on a 10-year journey to create space for the emergence of postmodern nursing in Peru. It describes the traditional machismo and paternalistic environment where enfermeras peruanas practice, an environment not reported in the peer-reviewed literature. Next, the chapter describes the exemplar project implemented to develop a space for nursing and then explains the curative versus carative epistemology. Finally, it describes the recent advancements and discusses the relevance to the future plans. The Caritas revolution in nursing continues to advance from North America, to Europe, to Africa, to Asia, and now to South America through the Watson Caring Science Institute scholars and postdoctoral fellows.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual assault are common violent crimes perpetrated on women. Obstetric (OB) complications associated with trauma include miscarriage, preterm labor, and placental abruption. Ongoing mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, are more prevalent in pregnant women subjected to any form of IPV, whether or not direct physical violence is involved. One study showed that pregnant women subjected to verbal threats were twice as likely to deliver low-birth-weight infants. All women who present to an OB triage unit or an emergency department (not just those who present with an injury or complication) must be screened for IPV. An organized plan for providing the victim with resources must be readily available when a screen is positive. This chapter discusses presenting symptomatology, history and data collection, physical examination, laboratory and imaging studies, differential diagnosis, clinical management and follow-up care of IPV and sexual assault.