Introduction
It is advisable for nurses to reflect on their journey in the nursing field. This paper presents my life in this field. It begins by giving my nursing autobiography. It also presents a section on the various meta-paradigms that are highly applicable in nursing care. The expositions made in this paper will be highly valuable to all incoming nurses, especially when it comes to helping them to link the theory learned in class to the day-to-day nursing practice.
Nursing Autobiography
My journey in nursing began when I joined Michigan State University to pursue my degree in nursing. During my years as a student, I was employed as a student nurse in the university’s teaching hospital where I mainly worked during the night shift. My salary was 5 dollars per hour. This figure was enough to sustain me throughout my college life. In 2013, I graduated with a Bachelor of Nursing Degree. I managed to secure employment in my hometown in Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit. There, I worked for about a year before transferring to Children’s Hospital of Michigan where I worked as the in-charge of theatre. During the same time, I was also able to link up with personal clients whom I looked after as their family nurses.
During my three years of practice, I have managed to reinforce my knowledge and skills. The knowledge has allowed me to devise my philosophy of nursing practice that I am constantly using to guide my day-to-day operations as a nurse. One of the most rewarding moments has been to help patients who were initially unwell and unable to care for themselves. By applying my nursing care philosophy, I have managed to impact greatly on people’s lives.
I am also a member of the Michigan Nurses Association, which is a professional body for registered nurses. The institution is licensed by the State of Michigan. My membership and participation have allowed me to nurture my skills and knowledge. For instance, to qualify for renewal of registration, one is required to show proof of his or her commitment to growth regarding knowledge and skills. This requirement has forced me to attend various nursing and medical seminars that have further added to my existing knowledge year after year. I can confidently say that I am in the right profession where I have improved the quality of people’s lives, both the healthy and those that are ailing.
Meta-paradigms of Nursing Practice
Four meta-paradigms or concepts, namely the ailing person, the caregiver, health, and the surroundings, are involved in nursing care. Due to their abstract nature, other conceptual models and theories have been developed from the four basic meta-paradigms to explain, describe, and predict phenomena that are within the model. The patient paradigm refers to the individual or person who receives care in the context of a subject, rather than just a patient. This inference allows for the accommodation of social groups and families that define the patient as a person. Nevertheless, according to Loyola and Malinis (2012), the patient as a subject is regarded as autonomous and unique. Nursing is regarded as a paradigm of empathy due to the nurses’ duty of helping and relieving suffering. Additionally, nurses are expected to maintain a high degree of an emotional and ethical paradigm based on the principles of the profession (Loyola & Malinis, 2012).
Health is not a term of absolution. Rather, it refers to a context of wellbeing or illness. This paradigm focuses on a holistic outlook of the patients regarding their physical, social, moral, spiritual, and social realms. Fulton, Lyon, and Goudreau (2010) assert that wellbeing is greatly influenced by the environment. In some cases, the two paradigms are inseparable. This concept has allowed nurses to apply the rule of thumb of viewing these two paradigms holistically and as undividable. The environment refers to both the social and the physical setting that affects the nurse, the patient, the physical condition, and the connection between the caregiver and the sick (Basford & Slevin, 2003).
Practice-specific Concepts
The Concept of Human Needs
In practice, the role of a nurse is to complement and supplement the needs of an individual to a point of independence. According to Vera (2014), human needs are the focus of the paradigm of nursing, particularly self-care needs. However, this claim is made with the following assumptions in mind:
- Patients have the desire to regain their health
- Nurses have the will of serving their patient day and night
- The mind and body are not distinguishable
- Nurses possess knowledge and skills required to care for their patients
- Nurses care for their patients until they are fully self-regulating
The Concept of Self-care
Nursing is an act of providing management of self-care to improve or maintain human functioning at the normal level of efficiency. Therefore, nursing focuses on the ability of individuals to take care of themselves (Wayne, 2014). This concept holds under the following assumption.
- To remain purposeful while maintaining life, humans are in constant communication with themselves and the environment
- Nurses possess the power to act consciously to identify various needs and/or make the much-needed judgments
- Mature human beings are deprived in regards to self-care
- Human action, which is aimed at discovery, development, and transmittance to others, implies the identification of needs and making inputs both to oneself and to others.
- Human beings structure themselves in groups to provide care to other group members.
Concept Synthesis on Personal Nursing Philosophy
My Definitions and Employment of the Four Meta-paradigms in Practice
I define a patient as an adaptive individual who can respond to different stimuli, which may be internal or external. This response can be in a positive or a negative way. In the social context, a patient’s response results from the interaction of three phenomena, namely the natural, psychosomatic, and collective events. A patient can also be described as a person who is in a struggle to have his or her care needs met to live and mature appropriately. Secondly, I define nursing as the practice of delivery of optimal outcomes in health to a patient through ensuring a mutual relationship that is in existent between the patient and me in a caring and safe environment. As a nurse, I should apply my knowledge, skills, and professional judgments during the discharge of my duties in an effort to maximize positive outcomes of the patients’ overall wellbeing. Thirdly, I define health as a holistic outlook of the patients regarding their physical, shared, ethical, and public realms. Additionally, due to the direct interaction between health and the environment, I endeavor to create a conducive and favorable environment for both health and sick individuals to foster their overall wellbeing.
Major Concepts that I employ in Practice
The Concept of Human Needs
The notion of human needs helps me to recognize my role as a nurse in ensuring that the desires of all my patients are adequately met to the point that they can take care of themselves. Moreover, I view human needs in the context of my patients, the environment, and their overall wellbeing. For instance, through maintaining good relationships with them, I have managed to attend to most of their requirements.
Concept of Self-care
In my professional practice, I address deficiencies in self-care concerning my patients, the surroundings, practice, and the general wellbeing of all individuals. To achieve this goal, my philosophy is to come up with strategic nursing systems that address self-care deficiencies at all meta-paradigms. For instance, I can take care of cancers patient by addressing their daily needs, ensuring that they are in a favorable physical and social environment, and ensuring that their wellbeing is good or acceptable.
Theory Integration
Transcultural Nursing
The transcultural nursing concept emphasizes the provision of care that is in harmony with the cultural beliefs, values, or practices of an individual or group. To achieve this goal, the nurse must possess diverse knowledge and skills in nursing care that can be applied to different cultural situations to the best interest of the affected individuals or groups. Collaboration is vital between the nurse and the individual when classifying, setting up, executing, and evaluating the nursing care plan. With reference to my nursing philosophy, this concept integrates itself in the sense that I am forced to consider the cultural values of every individual or group in practice. In addition, I give due consideration of how culture affects the physical condition, the individual, the background, and me as a nurse. A research by Leuning, Swiggum, Wiegert, and Mccullough-Zander (2002) on transcultural nursing standards asserts that standards are useful in transcultural nursing since they are auxiliary and matching to the practice.
Health Promotion Model
Through identifying the various models that influence the behavior of my patients, I am able to devise an effective intervention strategy that can assist my patients. The model influences a positive change in their behavior by helping them to achieve a healthy lifestyle. One particular strategy is the assessment component of the model that allows me to classify my patients’ physical activities based on their previous conduct and individual, situational, and interpersonal influences (Pender, 2011). A research carried out to determine the usefulness of a health promotion model in predicting nutritional behavior among patients who were diabetic indicates a positive outcome. Through attaching relationships of health promotion model constructs and nutritional behavior, Mohebi et al. (2013) identify a need for intervention through creating awareness among diabetics.
Skill Acquisition
Skill acquisition is an important part of my nursing philosophy. It has helped me to narrow the gap that exists between theory and practice. My underpinning of this concept has allowed me to improve my skill of caring for patients in a holistic way that hastens their recovery. Research by Scully (2011) reveals that nurses can improve the value of their practice by acquiring and improving their skills to practice effectively for the benefit of their patients.
Role theory
According to the role theory, the general role of my clinical practice is to provide solicited needs and care for individuals, both healthy and sick, to promote their overall wellbeing. By applying principles such as goal setting, human management, and client-nurse coordination, I can perform my role as a caregiver more effectively. An investigation on the role of community nurse in the contemporary health care systems reveals that role theory may be used to conceptualize the position of an individual such as a nurse or the organization he or she works for. The conceptualization can be done by exploring the behaviors and attitudes of those involved in the profession (Brookes, Davidson, Daly, & Halcomb, 2007).
Change Theory
In my practice, I encounter situations where there is the need to change how I attend to the needs of my patients. Most of the time, patients resist change. Therefore, my duty as a nurse involves implementing the change process in a way that is both acceptable to my patient and me. This awareness has forced me to incorporate Lewin’s model of change into my clinical practice. To achieve this goal, I first inform my patient about the change, including why it may be necessary for their overall benefit. I go ahead to implement the change after unfreezing their resistance. After the change has been implemented, I continue to inform the patients about their progress for them to get accustomed to the change.
Conclusion
My philosophy in nursing encompasses providing individuals – both healthy and the sick – with adequate care through meeting their daily needs to a point that they are able to take care of themselves. This philosophy has been shaped up by my experience during my three years of practice and through applying the various concepts/theories that are relevant to the nursing practice. Additionally, my philosophy entails applying each of these theories at all meta-paradigms. This move has helped me to identify various factors that affect an individual or group, thus allowing me to give better care to my clients.
Reference List
Basford, L., & Slevin, O. (2003). Theory and practice of nursing. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.
Brookes, K., Davidson, P., Daly, J., & Halcomb, E. (2007). Role theory: A framework to investigate the community nurse role in contemporary health care systems. Contemporary Nurse, 25(1-2), 146-155.
Fulton, J., Lyon, B., & Goudreau, K. (2010). Foundations of clinical nurse specialist practice. New York, NY: Springer.
Leuning, C., Swiggum, P., Wiegert, H., & Mccullough-Zander, K. (2002). Proposed Standards for Transcultural Nursing. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 13(1), 40-46.
Loyola, A., & Malinis, M. (2012).Theories in nursing: Metaparadigm and Theories in Nursing.
Mohebi, S., Sharifirad, G., Feizi, A., Botlani, S., Hozori, M., & Azadbakht, L. (2013). Can health promotion model constructs predict nutritional behavior among diabetic patients? Journal of Research in Medical Sciences : The Official Journal of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, 18(4), 346–359.
Pender, N. (2011). Heath Promotion Model Manual.
Scully, N. (2011). The theory-practice gap and skill acquisition: An issue for nursing education. Collegian, 18(2), 93-98.
Vera, M. (2014).Virginia Henderson’s Nursing Need Theory. Web.
Wayne, G. (2014). Dorothea Orem – Self Care Nursing Theory – Nurseslabs.