Core Personal Values Aligning with Professional Nursing Standards
Back in the nineteenth century, Florence Nightingale realized that nursing should not only rely on scientific knowledge and professionals’ skills but also on specific human values (Rassin, 2008). When comparing the personal nursing values to the professional nursing standards, there is overall consistency between the two categories. The alignment between the personal and professional values is necessary to facilitate consistency of the nursing practice in terms of the care for patients as well as the individual ideas as to how care should take place (Haddad & Geiger, 2020). The personal values of honesty, integrity, and fairness align with the standards and codes of ethics (Poorchangizi et al., 2017). Besides, such individual qualities as improvement, orientation on results, timeliness, and focus are all necessary for exercising professional values of collaboration and accountability while individuality and adaptability align with the principle of autonomy.
Individual Core Values Informing the Nursing Philosophy
Based on the mentioned individual core values of the nursing practice, it is possible to make inferences regarding nursing philosophy and its relevance to the process of care. The combination of values allows to develop a personalized approach toward nursing philosophy (Santana et al., 2018). The developed values develop a philosophy of nursing care being individualized and targeted to each patient within individualized, compassionate, and respectful toward their needs (Defazio, 2018). Within this philosophy, a nurse is expected to collaborate with all participants of the health care process to plan and provide nursing care to achieve the optimal level of health and wellness (Molina-Mula & Gallo-Estrada, 2020). In addition, because of the orientation on results, improvement, and accomplishment as important personal values, the nursing philosophy also encourages the development of the nursing practice by committing to lifelong learning (Qalehsari, Khaghanizadeh, & Ebadi, 2017). Ongoing learning and career growth are important for making sure that a nurse is involved in the decision-making process and has the opportunity to advocate for their patients in clinical and organizational practices. Finally, the nursing philosophy entails creating a work environment for nurses that nurtures and supports clinical excellence, shared responsibility, and education. Such an environment is imperative because it facilitates ongoing recruitment and retention of nurses who can show the highest level of qualifications, integrity, and competence.
Nursing Philosophy Shaping Communication with Staff and Offenders in the Correctional Setting
The identified nursing philosophy, which is focused on continuous care improvement and the focus on patient needs, enables increased collaboration between staff members when it comes to addressing complex patient cases. Nurses who are expected to deliver health care to individuals within a correctional setting are challenged to do so in a caring relationship that will enable health and healing (Jernigan, 2018). Evidence on the nature of correctional setting nursing shows that delivering care to individuals in custody should be carefully weighed against the needs for security, which could relate to such factors as staff values, education, nursing management, and specific organizational practices. Considering the unique characteristics of correctional settings, it is important that the nursing philosophy that relies on shared responsibility, collaboration, and improvement is exercised.
The identified nursing philosophy enables to separate the correctional status of patients from their health and wellness needs and allows nurses to work collaboratively to address such needs. The process of communication with staff and offenders, therefore, relies on the need to maintain objectivity and fairness as exercised by both personal and professional values (Dhaliwal & Hirst, 2016). Besides, the ideological intrusion of disciplinary philosophy is unethical to nursing values (Watson, 2018). Because of this, the collaborative efforts of nurses and their patients are aimed at preventing correctional priorities from overriding nursing priorities due to the need to provide individualized, compassionate, and respectful care (Maruca & Shelton, 2016). Therefore, it is essential to facilitate greater levels of communication among the staff working in correctional settings.
Correctional Setting Influencing Individual Nursing Philosophy
The peculiarities of the correctional setting will inevitably influence personal nursing philosophy due to the challenges that nurses may encounter during the process of caring for offenders. In alignment with Florence Nightingale’s foundational philosophy of nursing, the individual nursing philosophy can change and evolve in accordance with the events and processes occurring within the correctional setting (Wagner, 2018). Working in such an environment has pointed to the importance of elevating patients’ health needs and their objective state of health without the impact of patients’ offender status (Mold, 2017). Thus, the individual nursing philosophy has evolved to entail the responsibility of providing safe, holistic, and patient-centered care free of bias and personal attitudes toward the personality and the offending status of patients (Carson-Newman University, 2018). A nurse must remember that in the framework of this philosophy, patients do not represent their crimes or medical conditions but should rather be considered as individuals that need and deserve individualized care and attention (Ramluggun et al., 2019). Through ongoing collaboration and commitment to lifelong learning, it is expected to improve care quality within the correctional healthcare context.
References
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