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.

The medical model in psychiatry assumes medical intervention is the treatment of choice for the constellations of diagnosed symptoms that comprise various mental disorders. These treatments may include pharmacotherapy, electroconvulsive treatment, brain stimulation, and psychosurgery. Therefore, psychopharmacology for older adults can be considered palliative rather than a cure for a brain disease causing psychopathology. Older adults experience many psychopathological problems, including anorexia tardive, anxiety disorders, delusional disorders, mood disorders, personality disorders, schizophrenia, and co-occurring disorders with substance abuse/dependence disorders. Therefore, it is critical for the social worker to understand the various manifestations of psychological problems in older adults from the perspective of an older adult, rather than extrapolating information commonly taught in social work programs that neglect to focus on older adults and restrict teaching to psycho-pathological problems in younger and middle-aged adults.

For older adults, the phenomenon of death is accepted and does not induce the fear experienced by younger adults. Older adults who do not engage in end-of-life planning may receive unwanted, unnecessary, costly, and painful medical interventions or withdrawal of desired treatment. Many older people feel that the goal of palliative care is to make the best possible dying experience for the older adult and his/her family. In addition to palliative care, an older adult will most likely find himself or herself in an intensive care unit as part of his or her terminal care. Euthanasia, or hastened death, is seen by some as an alternative to palliative care. A psychological aspect of death that an older adult is concerned with, in addition to place of death, is whether he or she will die in his or her sleep or die suddenly, making the death experience an individual phenomenon.

This chapter opens with the challenge Nightingale and her close colleagues faced in establishing nursing as a profession when the ethical standards of the existing (secular) nurses were (generally) so low. The ethical issues she had to deal with in her own school, soon after it opened, are discussed three thorny problems with appointments. Anyone reading Nightingale’s writing on nursing will be struck by how often and how forcefully she insisted on high ethical standards. The reason for the emphasis on ethical standards is obvious enough in the task Nightingale faced in raising the new profession from its disreputable past. The International Council on Nursing (ICN) established its Code of Ethics in 1953, again based on Nightingale principles. It identified four responsibilities: to promote health, to prevent illness, to restore health, and to alleviate suffering. The code asks nurses not only to act ethically themselves, but to challenge unethical practices.

This chapter talks about mentor intelligence as a source of excellence. In order to perform successfully in a complex profession like nursing, there are beginning threshold requirements such as intellectual intelligence (IQ) and specialized knowledge and skills. Further, it is thought that working at a high level of excellence in one’s field requires emotional intelligence. However, the lack of Mentor Intelligence presents major impediments in developing one’s full potential to the highest level. The chapter provides ten tips for raising nurse’s mentor intelligence. The tips include such as cultivating the three ingredients of Mentor Intelligence, practicing nursing profession in a culture of mentorship and collegiality, sharpening nurse’s communication skills and their message, networking, becoming a mentor-leader, and being a “forever” student of mentoring, and developing the art of mentoring others. Three ingredients of Mentor Intelligence include mentoring mentality; mentoring lens; and mentoring momentum.

This chapter discusses the historical background of the mentor connection and mentoring relationships in nursing, different types of support relationships and mentors. It also discusses why and when nurse need mentors and early career challenges and mentoring. The mentor connection is a developmental, empowering, nurturing relationship extending over time, in which mutual sharing, learning, and growth occur in an atmosphere of respect, collegiality, and affirmation. Clearly, mentor connections and networks were integral to the developmental experience of successful career-oriented men. Mentoring is a vital component of professional nursing and that mentors are essential for nurses’ ongoing development and leadership achievement. In organizations, mentoring relationships serve as an antidote to disrespectful attitudes and behaviors among nurses and physicians and other health care providers. Mentors mentoring activities can be broken down into two categories: career functions and psychosocial functions.

This chapter presents what it means to be a professional nurse, the difference between a career and an occupation, the seasons and stages of a nursing career, and the value of collegiality in a nursing career. Professional nurses are expected to expand their knowledge and expertise throughout the different stages of their careers in order to provide safe comprehensive health services to the public in accordance with contemporary best practices. The chapter highlights the key elements of professional nursing as described in Nursing’s Social Policy Statement, Code of Ethics for Nurses, Nursing: Scope & Standards of Practice, and a State Nurse Practice Act. All life and career developmental models acknowledge the central importance of support persons in the life and career journey of every human being. Professional nurses demonstrate collegiality with each other by respecting, mentoring, and advocating for nursing students and nursing colleagues.

Disgust may seem like an odd topic to highlight in a book dedicated to enhancing patient-provider relationships, but it bears special consideration given that it is rarely openly discussed even though it is a common phenomenon. In the course of the authors’ work, clinicians are exposed to patients’ most basic human products: urine, feces, pus, blood, and vomit, to name a few. The authors encounter smells, see anatomical parts, hear bodily sounds, and touch things that people outside of health care can only imagine. Some of these things are very difficult to experience, and yet doing so is not only part of the job, but doing so graciously, with acceptance and sensitivity, is a gesture of compassion. Being in a state of mind to make that compassion happen is aided by mindfulness. This chapter provides an example of a forty five year-old woman with end-stage pancreatic cancer.

This chapter explores the importance of risk prevention in mentor relationships, about potential roadblocks for mentors and protégés, and how to manage change in the mentoring experience. Good risk prevention includes agreeing with nurse’s mentors on basic expectations about their goals and outcomes, frequency of contact, roles their mentor can play, expected performance of both partners, and how to address problems if they arise. Studies have reported various types of mentoring relationship problems such as unrealistic expectations, personal and professional mismatches, power and control issues, excessive competitiveness, “cloning”, communication, and dependence. Abuses of power in the mentor relationship occur when there are instances of manipulation, exploitation and excessive demands of loyalty and conformity by the mentor. Frequent, open, and honest communication is the foundation of healthy mentor relationships. The power and magic of mentor relationships are reflected in the achievements, joyful sharing, and professional and life connections between mentoring partners.

This chapter presents how to create a Personal Mentor Action Plan, types of mentors and where to find them, selection process of the mentor and the protégé, and how to inventory individuals and groups as potential mentors. The elements of this Action Plan are vision and goals, mentoring strategies, implementation activities, and mentoring outcomes. Potential mentors can be found at nurse’s workplace, conferences, classrooms, clinical units, meetings, and conventions. Two main types of mentor relationships will boost nurse’s career development: relationships that are “chosen” by the mentor and protégé, and relationships in which mentors and protégés are “matched” or assigned in a formalized program. “Assigned” mentors are found in on-the-job mentor programs, professional associations, specialty nursing organizations, and community volunteer programs. Currently, professional nursing and student associations are very proactive in offering formal mentor programs that address their members’ needs in various ways.