Comfort-Discomfort with Ambiguity: Flight and Freedom in Nursing Practice
Bibliographic record
Abstract
It has come to our attention that many nurses have a great deal of discomfort being with in-dividuals and families during times of suffer-ing, upset, or conflict. Upon reflection, many of these nurses express uncertainty about how to be or what to say that might be help-ful. Furthermore, many nurses comment that they have not been prepared with the knowl-edge they believe they must have to practice during these challenging situations; and so, they flee from the fragile opportunity to have meaningful dialogue. We have learned from nurses that there is an intense discomfort with the ambiguity inherent during times of struggle. The purposes of this column are to explore ambiguity in a general way and in the nurse-person process, and then to consider the phenomenon of flight that some nurses describe. It is our hope that the column might help nurses embrace the ambiguity that is essential to partici-pative practices with patients and families. Without ambigu-ity, there might be little reason to seek understanding in one’s own thinking or in discussions with others. The meaning of ambiguity is thick with layers of paradox and nuance. For instance, in the literature, ambiguity is seen both as something inherent to human experience and choice and also as a disquietude that should be dispelled. For some people ambiguity is a source of hope, whereas for others it signals dread. For some, dwelling with ambiguity is viewed as a weakness, whereas for others it is seen as a strength and a sign of openness. The term ambiguity, in general and in nursing, has complex and multilayered meanings. Enhanced under-standing of these meanings can help nurses reflect on their choices and actions to be, or not to be, with others.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.032 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.048 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.017 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.019 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".