Philosophy of Nursing

Philosophy of Nursing
Name:
Institution:
Date:
Being raised in an environment that valued engineering and careers that were related to engineering, I never thought one day I would find myself in a nursing class. My father being a "tech geek," influenced all my brothers to pursue causes in engineering. Surprisingly, even my sisters took careers in engineering, and I was the only one set to join the rest. My career fate up to this moment seemed to be predetermined. My mother, a nurse, had also accepted this and was encouraging everyone in the house to become an engineer.
However, this changed when in one of my free weekends while in high school I decided to pay my mother a courtesy visit at her work place in the local community hospital. Entering the door filled me with much excitement and as my mum took me around the hospital and gave the explanations of all the activities that were taking place I immediately knew what I wanted to be in future – a nurse.
As I was introduced to nursing, there were four metaparadigms that my lecturer insisted as being the basis of nursing. These are person, environment, health, and nursing. According to Eckberg & Hill (1979), a metaparadigm comprises of the most global perspective of the discipline and is the encapsulating unit within which the more restricted structures develop (Masters, 2014). These metaparadigms are defined in several ways by different authors. However, from a personal perspective I believe that a person in the nursing profession is a living organism/creature that is struggling to acquire and maintain well-being. The environment, on the other hand, is what that surrounds a person, and the person is the one that interacts with the environment to attain well-being. That is the optimum state of physical, psychological, social, mental, and spiritual as per the biopsychosocial perspective of wellness (Fave, 2013). When an imbalance in any of the aspects that are tied to the aspects of well-being set in, a person becomes a patient/client when he/she seeks help from a healthcare setting.
Health refers to the person/client’s ability to attain well-being within the environment and the greatest well-being attainable by the person/client. For me, nursing is more than a medical profession. It is the work of an artist (the nurse) hence a form of art that has several duties and obligations in different health setting and phases to attain well-being. The nurse promotes the health of the person and also is critical in the prevention of illness. The nurse is also required to assist the unwell person. However, if this is impossible, the nurse is required to help the patient attain the best possible level of well-being possible, accept and adapt to the attained level of well-being.
My personal nursing philosophy is that nurses and at the individual level as a nurse I am required to provide care to all the patients. This care should be provided in a safe manner and holistically using methods that are based on eviden...