Nursing has various definitions depending on every culture and generation from around the world. In my opinion, I defined nursing as a healthcare profession, which focuses on the care of people, their families, and communities to achieve an overall goal of relative health and quality of life throughout life. From this worldview I can define the metaparadigm concepts (Person, Environment, Heath, Nursing) of nursing to develop my own philosophy of nursing which, addresses the concerns of nursing, and further it enables me to assess what values I possess that will help achieve that philosophy.
A metaparadigm represents the worldview of a discipline in its broadest perspective. The metaparadigm of nursing has four central concepts which are all interrelated but have different meanings; person, environment, health, and nursing (MCEwen, & Wills, 2010). These four central concepts when defined individually encompass many of the concerns of nursing. Person represents an individual’s needs, culture, and behavior. It acknowledges the physical, mental, intellectual, and chemical components as a system within a system on a global scale.
As nurses we must view our clients in a olistic manner and understand that a person is more than just a physical human being. We can accomplish this by looking closely at what the client’s needs are and determine if they are being met. The basic needs are food, water, and shelter. A client’s level of comfort should also be taken into consideration. Are they in pain? Do they look anxious? Are they confused? Psychological needs are also important. Clients should feel that they have a say in their healthcare plan and should feel satisfied with their care.
Health is a state of wellbeing, in which, one has he ability to function and take care of themselves independently while free from stress and illness. As nurses we must keep in mind that there are varying degrees of health and we must always be good advocates of health to our clients, our communities, and ourselves. Nurses are continuously learning about latest technology in order to provide the best care for client’s in various degrees of health. Nurses can keep healthy people healthy by sharing their knowledge with the community instructing various groups about health issues, disease prevention, nutrition, and child care.
They can help implement prevention programs, arrange immunization clinics, blood pressure checks, and health screenings. If a client is unable take care of themselves independently nurses are trained to assess that client’s needs, prepare a plan based on the clients diagnosis, and make changes to that plan as needed in order to achieve the highest level of health possible for that client. Environment is a multilayered concept that involves all elements that affect a person physically, mentally, and socially. A person’s environment can be influenced by geologic location, family, and ocio-cultural interactions.
As nurses we must be aware of cultural differences when providing care for clients understanding that our perception of what is culturally acceptable may not be acceptable for our client. Ultimately, the healthcare environment is what we provide our client and it’s the nurse’s job to ensure the client is comfortable in that environment. Nursing, as I mentioned earlier, in my opinion is defined as a healthcare profession, which focuses on the care of people, their families, and communities to achieve an overall goal of relative health and quality of life throughout life.
There is science and art in nursing both concepts are equally important to the profession of nursing. The science of nursing relates to healthcare theory’s, which are put into practice based on the physical evidence that they are beneficial to health. The art portion involves caring for the best interests of the client. With the knowledge and understanding that each client has different needs. Possessing the ability to assess these needs and determine what type of care or intervention is needed to improve the clients’ health, person, and environment is the art of nursing. My personal values are what attracted me to nursing as a profession.
Knowing what I value provides me with a way to approach nursing. In addition, these values also provide me with something concrete to “check-in” with when making decisions about a client, administering medications, or providing interventions. I feel the value I admire most in myself is integrity. Integrity to me, in its simplest terms, means doing what is right when no one is looking. As a nurse we are trusted with client’s lives on a daily basis. The task of handling and administering powerful medications is just one role the nurse ust perform that demonstrates the importance of integrity.
Integrity is the moral fiber of credibility if we allow our integrity to be compromised, as nurses, we put our clients in harm’s way while simultaneously damaging our profession as a whole. Empathy places an emphasis on the client’s situation, perspective, and feelings. Incorporating empathy into the nursing practice enables you to understand what the client is going through providing the ability to help them in a therapeutic way. In my own experience in healthcare, I find that many healthcare providers lose sight of the value of empathy over heir careers.
They stop viewing the patient in the holistic manner of person, health, environment, pain, family and start seeing them as work. It is my opinion, that once you stop seeing the client as a person and start seeing them as work it is time to find a new profession. Considering how these values articulate with the morals of society is an important factor when providing care for clients. For example, empathy is extremely important when dealing with the elderly because throughout generations, as people grow older, some believe that morals of society have egraded in comparison with the morals of their generation.
Your mannerism when dealing with elderly clients may have a direct effect on their respect for you as their healthcare provider, which, in turn, has an effect on their environment and health. The ability to use empathy to accept the difference in others increases your ability to provide clients with a higher standard of care in the practice of nursing. In the morals of society integrity correlates with honesty. The foundation of a moral person begins with honesty and while most of us may not onsider our society completely honest the act of striving to be an honest person will positively affect our environment and our society.
Knowing what to do as a nurse is a process in which all people, not just nurses, learn, to some extent, throughout life. At the very basic level nursing is about caring for someone, which is an instinct we learn from our family, our culture, and our life experiences. As professional nurses we take those instincts and develop them into a process, which provides care to the client based on a plan with a goal of achieving better health.
We understand how to assess a client’s care plan and make necessary changes to achieve the goal of better health by incorporating empirical data, aesthetics, personal experience, and ethics into the practice of nursing. I understand that once I begin to practice as a nurse my philosophy will change. My current philosophy of nursing is based on my own life experiences up to this point. As a result of defining what values I possess, as well as, my concerns of nursing I have developed what my world view of the metaparadigm concepts of nursing (person, health, environment, and nurse) means to me.
