I Dare You to Drink the Vinegar

I felt like work-life balance was much more manageable when I was working 12 hour shift work rather than Monday to Friday 0745-1600. In retrospect working in the Vancouver area was actually pretty good. There was so much more potential there than I could see at the time, perhaps because I was a bit burnt out and not as invested as I could have been. Or maybe, in the my current position of employment, I just have more time to reflect on my practice then and compare it to what I see now now. The inpatient mental health and addiction world is kind of a sad place that oddly enough holds so much hope of being a better place. I find that I have much more time now to reflect on the practice of mental health nursing in general. That being said, here are my goals for 2013: 1) Incorporate reflective practice into the lives of staff nurses in a tangible way 2) Encourage more thought about how human rights issues are challenged by current inpatient mental health practice I find myself thinkin

Happy Canada Day. Take a minute to reflect on what this means to you. If you are a newly landed immigrant this might mean something vastly different than a seventh generation Canadian descended from British immigrants, and again something vastly different than someone who is Aboriginal. I have been noticing lately that many of the forms and surveys that I have been viewing and completing are using the terms gender and sex incorrectly. This is very irritating to me. However the definition of gender does not seem to be common knowledge. Perhaps this is knowledge that I gained through my sociology degree (with a concentration in gender studies). The definitions of both terms are as follows:      ""Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society        considers appropriate for men and women."      ""Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men an