Social justice, as penned in a case Williams v. Calalang, is “neither communism, nor despotism, nor atomism, nor anarchy,” but the humanization of laws and the equalization of social and economic forces by the State so that justice in its rational and objectively secular conception may at least be approximated. This is an agreeable definition as this definition tackles on how the State may be able to tilt the social and economic force to lean in favor of those who need it.
As the industrial revolution called for the development of the concept social justice. This need evolved out of necessity, it now covers “environment, race, gender, and other causes and manifestations of inequality” (Pachamama, 2019, par. 2). This is broader concept encompasses a universal approach just like the application of medicine. In the field of medicine, specifically the nursing practice, social justice creates a more personalized figure; it would define a pillar in this profession.
The nursing profession is a field that would embody social justice. In the words of Roush (2011), “Social justice is a nursing responsibility.” The position of nurses is a juxtaposition of the broad medical field to the individual and personalized care that is provided to each patient. Imagine having to care for patients with diverse background – with different social determinants of health. The World Health Organization (2019) defines social determinants of health as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.”
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Those in the nursing practice is absorbed with the role to create opportunities for those who have none; say, they would be able to advise other services that is within the capacity of the patients. It may also be through simple tasks as educating the patients’ families of their rights and opportunities. These seemingly simple disparities that may be bridged by those in the nursing profession, more importantly of those in family nursing. In the same manner, as supported by Braveman and Gottlieb (2014,cited by Deatrick, 2017) there are “three pathways through which education can effect health which can be applied to family health, including health knowledge, literacy coping, and problem solving; work/employment; and control beliefs, social standing, and social networks.”
A critical attribute of social justice is equity in the distribution of power, resources, and processes that affect the sufficiency of the social determinants of health (BuettnerSchmidt & Lobo, 2012, cited by Ezeonwu, 2019). The disparities are usually anchored on economic disparities, however, behavioral determinants are more applicable today. Adler et al., (2016, cited by Deatrick, 2017) suggests that “health multilevel frameworks describing the social and behavioral determinants of health would achieve better population health, less inequality, and lower costs than traditional frameworks addressing either population or individual health.”
Although the seeming availability of these published notions and the existence of frameworks, there is still a call for the academe to incorporate professional nursing values like social justice. In a study by Einhellig*, Gryskiewicz and Hummel (2017), it states that there should be a consistent focus in the professional values and not merely on training the nurses to be task-oriented. If the nurses would lack such knowledge then they would not have the capacity to “resolve to make a difference.”
Therefore, those in the nursing position are, in fact, the ones that can create the most impact in spreading social justice. The nurses are the personalization of social justice.
References
- United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
- National Center for Biotechnology Information – Health and Social Justice: A Nursing Perspective
- Canadian Journal of Political Science – Social Justice: A Critical Perspective
- University of Northern Iowa – Social Justice in Education: A Philosophical Argument for a Contextualized Approach
