Introduction
Nursing is one of the most challenging and most interesting fields in health care in the 21st century. On the one hand, it is necessary to consider recent progress, technological achievements, and human rights to make sure that high-quality care and assessment are offered. On the other hand, it is required to remember the history of nursing and its significant contributors like Nightingale, Watson, or Orem because they indicate the essence of nursing practice and promote the creation of own philosophies and theories (Alligood, 2014). In this paper, I am going to develop my own nursing philosophy the goal of which is to evaluate the concept of trust in nurse-patient relationships.
Key Concepts
The creation of nursing philosophy is a time-consuming process that should improve current practice and solve existing problems and challenges. Today, such factors as globalization, industrialization, the Internet, and cultural diversity play an important role in nursing. They determine the quality of in-hospital communication and its effects on treatment and care processes. At the same time, these factors challenge nurses and create new unknown conditions.
My philosophy consists of the concepts of human interaction, social environment, and an understanding of trust. Human interactions include communication that nurses have to develop with patients and colleagues. Nursing can be approved as the application of this concept helps to exchange information and promote trust. The social environment should be recognized as it defines human qualities and expectations. Its application is a chance to understand what people want to obtain from nursing services. Finally, an understanding of trust is the concept that helps create the standards according to which people can talk to each other, ask questions, and share personal information.
Metaparadigms
Four paradigms can be used to define my nursing philosophy of trustful relationships between nurses and patients. First, a person is a patient who wants to receive care and is provided with fair and clear information. Being affected by the environment, a person has the right to develop trustful relationships with a nurse. Therefore, an understanding of the environment has to be properly developed. In this case, the environment includes a hospital and the community where the patient lives. Health is another concept that introduces a combination of physical and emotional well-being with the possibility to be involved in human processes and constructive decision-making. Finally, nursing is an interpersonal process where trust, care, and respect are properly demonstrated by nurses and used to support patients and their families. All these meta paradigms are the parts of a nursing philosophy or theory. The examples of other nurses prove their correct application to practice helps achieve positive results.
Nursing Process – Philosophy
When I was a child, I visited hospitals a lot because of the disease of my grandparents. I observed how families came and left hospitals, being inspired by their recovery or being frustrated because of untreated diseases being diagnosed or deaths. Nurses tried to support patients and chose the best words they could. Still, it was not enough. Not all patients or their families could trust them. With time, I learned that ethics, emotions, and respect could define the quality of nursing care (Newham, 2015; Scott, Matthews, & Kirwan, 2014). I dreamed about the possibility to create a plan of care where communication and fair relationships can help people deal with their health problems.
My philosophy is based on trust combined with care and information that is offered to patients and their families. When a person comes to a hospital, he or she should not be afraid of being mistreated or poorly informed. Nurses are ready to answer the questions, give recommendations within their qualifications, and support people. This philosophy can be applied to present practice through compassion, empathy, and the use of simple and kind words.
Nursing Process – Strengths and Limitations
As well as any other project, theory, or method, my nursing philosophy has its strong and weak sides. For example, its strength is the maintenance of strong relationships in hospitals. Trust should be the basic issue in professional communication between nurses, doctors, and other health care workers, as well as interpersonal communication between nurses, patients, and their families. However, the main limitation is the inability to create common standards to an understanding of trust. There are as many opinions and attitudes to trust as people in this world. They are free to accept this concept in the most convenient ways. Therefore, one way a person understands trust can vary from the way another person does it.
Conclusion
To conclude, my philosophy of nursing promotes a possibility to develop trustful relationships between nurses, patients, their families, and other health care workers. Though not every person is able to become a good nurse, there is always a chance for a nurse to become a good person. I want to believe that my past knowledge, experience, and respect for the achievements of other theorists help create a unique approach to nursing care in the modern world. Nowadays, people are not always ready to trust each other. Such shortcoming has to be eliminated in nursing practice using this individual philosophy and the combination of concepts and meta paradigms.
References
Alligood, M. R. (Ed.). (2014). Nursing theorists and their work (8th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.
Newham, R. A. (2015). Virtue ethics and nursing: On what grounds? Nursing Philosophy, 16(1), 40-50. Web.
Scott, P. A., Matthews, A., & Kirwan, M. (2014). What is nursing in the 21st century and what does the 21st century health system require of nursing? Nursing Philosophy, 15(1), 23-34. Web.