Nurses play a pivotal role in health care delivery, considering that they are actively involved in the patient’s healing process. These health care professionals require guidelines in their daily practice to deliver care to patients. However, nurses cannot obtain the guidance they need in their practice without a conceptual framework to guide them. This challenge brings the need for a nursing philosophy or theory to provide them with a conceptual framework to guide their daily practice (Pursio et al., 2021). These philosophies and theories play a fundamental role in promoting the acquisition of nursing knowledge and increasing the awareness of nursing ethics for rational decision-making and comprehensive caregiving. Nursing philosophies and theories achieve the above objectives by helping nurses organize their thoughts for critical thinking and decision making. This paper focuses on the nursing philosophy that the author can utilize in critical thinking and decision-making in nursing practice. The paper also includes a discussion of the personal definition of nursing, health, person, and environment. Further, the essay discusses the nursing beliefs and values that guide the author’s practice and analyzes the author’s communication style.
Nursing Philosophy/Middle-Range Theory
Nursing philosophies and middle-range theories are crucial in guiding nurses in their daily practice through their conceptual framework. For instance, Jean Watson’s philosophical model of transpersonal care is crucial in the author’s practice since it helps in conceptualizing the nursing profession from a holistic perspective (Watson & Woodward, 2020). This model articulates the author’s values and beliefs towards nursing and is the driving force to skillful nursing practice. The author’s philosophy is grounded on Jean Watson’s holistic perspective that focuses on health care providers as the central focus of the nursing profession. In this sense, the hallmark of the author’s profession is to provide care and compassion to the patients. The author leans towards a patient-centered approach when caring for patients. This attribute enables the author to provide an empathetic experience to patients and accommodate their uniqueness in the nursing practice. The author also focuses on delivering holistic and culturally sensitive care by including all facets of the patient, including their friends and family members. Jean Watson’s philosophical model also helps the author perceive nursing beyond providing curative services. The author transcends the above perception to individualize curative services to the patient’s needs and deliver excellent services to achieve positive patient outcomes.
Personal Definition of Nursing, Person, Health, and Environment
The author’s nursing philosophy informed by Jean Watson’s philosophical model of transpersonal care helps intertwine the meta-paradigm concepts of nursing, person, health, and environment in their nursing profession. In this case, the author defines human beings as energy fields with unique life experiences (Kadivar et al., 2018). This definition supposedly implies that a person is greater than the sum of their parts. It is impossible to predict a person from knowledge of their parts. The author also perceives a person as holistic, dynamic, and multidimensional central to nursing practice. In this case, a person should be respected, valued, understood, and protected in their right to make informed decisions about their health (Smolander et al., 2021). The nursing professional must change in mutual process with the patient’s changing environment.
Moreover, the environment is a crucial aspect of individuals’ health outcomes because it dictates their social experience. In this case, the author perceives the environment to include numerous societal aspects like customs, beliefs, expectations, and values. The nursing practitioner encounters nature’s aesthetic relationships and caring beauty in the environment. According to the author, numerous environmental factors affect health and nursing practice, including psychological, cultural, historical, and social aspects (Sibiya, 2018). The author also defines health as a dynamic process synthesizing wellness and illness across a continuum. In this, the definition of health is based on the client’s perception across their lifespan. The author also perceives health as a relational and contextual concept, considering it focuses on the client’s actual nature in social, physical, and moral realms. Health is also perceived as attaining a quality life free from diseases, resulting in optimal body, mind, and soul function.
The author defines nursing as an art and science of holistic health care governed by ethics, meaningful relationships, and human freedom and responsibility values. The nursing component is representative of one’s skills, from theory and practice to collaboration and communication (Ram et al., 2019). This component also incorporates the knowledge required to perform nursing care duties and responsibilities. Nonetheless, it is imperative to note that hard skills and knowledge are not supreme in nursing practice and observation. Instead, nurses must be guided by the ability to show compassion and empathy to patients (Pursio et al., 2021). The author perceives the nursing component as the actionable side of the meta-paradigm since it includes everything a nurse does for their patient. It is imperative to integrate the nursing component with the other components of the meta-paradigm to deliver client-centered care.
Nursing Values
Nursing practice plays a fundamental role in caring for and promoting health for diverse patients with conflicting values. Nursing professionals must embrace ethical values in their practice since they govern their professional conduct decision-making process in health care delivery. A lack of ethical and cultural values in health care practice leads to ethical and cultural dilemmas cropping in nurses’ daily practice. Numerous beliefs and values about nursing guide the author’s nursing practice. One of the crucial ethical guidelines that guide the author’s nursing practice is human dignity. The author believes that nurses should respect patients, their families, and their communities (Kadivar et al., 2018). The author adheres to and promotes human dignity when providing care to patients by embracing diversity and respecting the patients’ values and beliefs. The author also preserves the patients’ confidentiality and dignity during medication. Furthermore, it embraces empathy when dealing with patients to ensure that the care plan developed can lead to positive patient outcomes.
Moreover, the author embraces respect for autonomy when making health care decisions. According to Smolander et al. (2021), respect for autonomy entails giving patients the freedom to choose whether or not to accept a particular treatment recommendation. The author always furnishes the patient and their families with sufficient information regarding their diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment to make informed decisions regarding their health. The author also embraces responsibility as a fundamental value guiding the nursing practice. The above value entails a nurse’s moral obligation towards their patient while respecting their autonomy and rights in the decision-making process (Sibiya, 2018). aThe above ethical principle acts as the author’s yardstick in providing high-quality, evidence-based care that focuses on patients’ needs.
An Analysis of the Author’s Communication Style
The communication style nurses embrace in their daily practice plays a fundamental role in their interaction with their patients and other healthcare facilities. Nonetheless, it is imperative to note that communication involves passing information to others and listening to them (Ram et al., 2019). Nurses must embrace active listening during patient assessments, diagnosis, and treatment planning. An effective communication style is crucial in developing a positive interpersonal relationship to achieve positive patient experiences. Nurses should also acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses in their communication styles to determine the necessary actions to take. For instance, the author embraces numerous communication styles and tools in nursing practice to build positive interpersonal relationships. Firstly, the author embraces hourly rounding as a crucial tool for conducting hourly visits to inpatients to address their needs. The above tool plays a crucial role in identifying situations risks that may require urgent medical interventions (Pursio et al., 2021). As a result, the tool improves hospital experience and inpatients’ health outcomes.
Moreover, the author incorporates the best practices to meet each patient’s unique needs rather than relying on a single communication style. The author avoids medical jargon when communicating with patients to meet their health competency level when explaining complex medical procedures. This communication approach helps patients understand what would happen to them if given a particular medication and have informed consent to make decisions. The author also ensures a moderate speed in speech delivery to enable patients to follow the conversation and ask questions when necessary. The author also asks patients questions to gauge whether they have understood the information communicated to them.
Despite the above strengths, it is imperative to acknowledge that the author’s communication style has numerous weaknesses. Firstly, external factors like unfamiliarity with the patient’s vernacular language hinder effective communication and eventually compromise patient care (Kadivar et al., 2018). Secondly, cultural differences are also a barrier to effective communication since the caregiver may not be familiar with some minority cultures to offer culturally-centered care. Besides, teamwork and collaboration play a fundamental role in health care delivery and management. The author’s interpersonal and communication skills are essential in building strong working relationships when working in an interdisciplinary team. These skills help nurses promote high-quality care and reduce medical errors to boost patients’ outcomes. Conclusively, nursing philosophies and theories guide nurses in their commitment to providing high-quality patient-centered care. These theories and philosophies also help nursing define nursing meta-paradigms and develop effective communication styles to build a positive relationship to promote high-quality care.
References
Kadivar, M., Mardani-Hamooleh, M., & Kouhnavard, M. (2018). Concept analysis of human dignity inpatient care: Rodgers’ evolutionary approach. Journal of medical ethics and history of medicine, 11.
Pursio, K., Kankkunen, P., Sanner‐Stiehr, E., & Kvist, T. (2021). Professional autonomy in nursing: An integrative review. Journal of Nursing Management.
Ram, M. S., John, J., & John, S. (2019). Purposeful hourly rounding by nurses: A best practice implementation project. International Journal of Nursing Care, 7(2), 16.
Sibiya, M. N. (2018). Effective communication in nursing. Nursing, 119, 19-36.
Smolander, N., Isokoski, A., & Kokko, R. (2021). Ethical Considerations and Evidence-Based practice. DigiNurse Model: A New Approach to Digital Coaching for Nursing Students.
Watson, J., & Woodward, T. K. (2020). Jean Watson’s theory of human caring. SAGE Publications Limited.
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