Workplace agent or victim.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Date: 01 June 2012
• Author: Levett, Coral

For the most part nurses and midwives are "agentic", and work with other agentic professionals on a daily basis. By agentic, I refer to people who are clear about their purpose in life and what they want to accomplish in the career they have chosen and in their daily actions. They understand how their actions contribute to the future they desire and work towards these goats. They are usually confident in their actions and in dealing with colleagues and clients. I think the word has its roots in the philosophical arena (human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world) and also the sociology arena (refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices).

From a personal development point of view and according to McAdams (1993, p47) "the infant emerges from the first two years of life with an unconscious, pervasive, and 'enduring belief' concerning the extent to which wishes, intentions, desires, and dreams are 'attainable'". Although we apparently all start out this way, this underlying positive or negative belief in self can be altered. General progression through life...