True Grit: A Core Nursing Attribute?
‘Seeing things through.’
In the popular movie named after the attribute, a young girl searches for a man with “true grit”—someone with courage, fortitude, and determination to see things through. She needed someone to find her father’s murderer and believed only someone with true grit would be able to persevere against the odds.
The concept of grit is a good one to describe attributes that a good nurse should possess. How often do we get through challenging days—with short staff and patient crises, for example—just by sheer grit, by having the willpower to soldier on and do what needs to be done?
Helping nursing students develop grit.
In this month’s issue of AJN, Linda Koharchik reflects on the need for grit in nursing and believes nursing faculty can help students develop it. In her article “Helping Students to be Gritty,” she cites several sources that describe ways for clinical instructors to help students. One way is to assign challenging patients or situations, so students can benefit from the instructor’s guidance in handling particularly difficult circumstances.
I agree. As a nursing student, I gained most of my clinical experience in a large municipal hospital that was often underequipped, with basic supplies sometimes hard to come by. We learned to problem-solve and improvise […]
