Two Practice-Specific Concepts
A concept is a highly complex mental image reflecting one’s idea about a particular entity. Concept formation helps classify life situations and thereby understand them. In the nursing profession, it is highly important to identify practice-specific concepts to have a clear vision of one’s scope of responsibilities, missions, and goals.
I believe that one of the key concepts for a nurse practitioner in health promotion. Since we cannot administer medications or make patients undergo therapies and other procedures, we should do our best to involve them in the decision-making process and guide them to the right choice. It is often challenging to convince the patient that your recommendations, however unpleasant or futile they may seem, will lead him/her to recovery.
This task is particularly challenging in the case of patients suffering from terminal or chronic conditions since the majority of them do not have any hope for the better. Since full recovery cannot be attained in such cases, we must inspire those patients to struggle against the disease, thereby slowing its progressing and prolonging life. It has been proven by research that patients who are terminally sick often suffer from depression and need to be empowered to restore they will live regardless of the challenges they have to meet (Sachs, Kolva, Pessin, Rosenfeld, & Breitbart, 2013). Therefore, I am convinced that health promotion, although it does not involve and actual treatment procedures, can indeed make a difference and improve patients’ satisfaction with care.
Another key concept is an evidence-based practice. As a nurse practitioner, I am mostly involved in practical tasks, which may create a delusion that I do not need any theoretical knowledge to fulfill my obligations. However, the situation is quite the opposite. Evidence-based practice is the one that allows a nurse to build his/her clinical expertise on the most appropriate evidence obtained from relevant studies (Hall & Roussel, 2016). The key idea is not to obtain knowledge per se (i.e. to pile up random theories and facts) but to learn how to apply it to real situations to meet challenges presented by real patients.
The importance of evidence-based practice is supported by the fact that almost all patients trust us as professionals and accept our recommendations, assuming that we know what would be best for them in their conditions. That is why a nurse practitioner bears responsibility for every step he/she makes as any recommendation that is not sufficiently grounded may bring about deplorable consequences to the patient. Moreover, such mistakes also create unnecessary expenditure and increase wastage (Hall & Roussel, 2016). The concept of evidence-based practice, therefore, helps with the prevention of unneeded and even harmful interventions.
List of Propositions
In most general terms, a proposition is an element that establishes relations between two or more concepts making it visible how they relate to one another. The following propositions can be made to connect the aforementioned concepts:
- It can be derived from scientific evidence that every person can be empowered through positive self-image and behaviors even if his/her condition is terminal.
- The patient’s well-being depends not only on the nurse’s knowledge but also on his/her ability to educate the patient on well-grounded practices of health promotion.
- The majority of studies on the topic suggest that health must be promoted from physical, mental, intellectual, social, and emotional perspectives simultaneously to achieve better results.
- Promoting health does not imply imposing decisions on the patient but rather helping him/her realize that the suggested way of treatment is the most efficient in the given case, which is proven by several arguments and instances.
- Nursing duty is not limited to clinical settings; therefore, the evidence-based practice should extend to follow-up health promotion and tracking of the results.
References
Hall, H. R., & Roussel, L. A. (2016). Evidence-based practice. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Sachs, E., Kolva, E., Pessin, H., Rosenfeld, B., & Breitbart, W. (2013). On sinking and swimming: The dialectic of hope, hopelessness, and acceptance in terminal cancer. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, 30(2), 121-127.