Issues Paper Nursing 330: Nursing Care of the Childbearing Family Purpose of Assignment To examine a controversial issue, whether political or publicly debated women’s health, obstetric, or neonatal, and present both sides equally. Student Approach to Assignment I chose the topic of therapeutic abortion because it continues to be a very polarized topic in our culture. Since it is a topic of controversy, I suspected that nurses personally and professionally struggle with this issue in nursing care of patients as well. As a professional nurse, I must be aware of the many controversial issues in today’s society. By having increased knowledge and awareness of both sides of a highly contested issue, helps prepare me to provide care to a variety of possible patients while maintaining as much culturally sensitivity as possible. Reason for Inclusion of the Assignment in the Portfolio I chose to include this in my portfolio because I think it demonstrates my skills and ability to research and understand both sides of controversial issues and it supports some of the required core behaviors of my program of study.  Critical Thinking  Engages in creative problem solving.  Example: This assignment forced me to attempt to remove my own bias related to a very controversial issue and provide argument for two sides of an issue with equality.  Communication  Produces clear, accurate, and relevant writing using correct grammar, spelling and punctuation  Example: In this paper, I clearly articulated and provided evidence for arguments for two sides of a highly controversial societal issue.  Teaching  Uses information technologies and other appropriate methods to enhance one’s own knowledge base  Example: In order to present information and arguments for both sides of this issue, I had to complete many hours using online library research resources to obtain equal amounts of knowledge on two sides of a debatable topic. This required electronic and web based skills in order to complete successfully.  Culture

 Demonstrates sensitivity to personal and cultural definitions of health, and how these beliefs influence an individual’s reactions to the illness experience and end of life  Example: By equally exploring two sides of the controversial issue of therapeutic abortion as it is related to health, I had to evaluate the impacts of beliefs as they relate to individual choices and behavior.