Understanding of Nursing
From my viewpoint, nursing is a process of taking care of people’s health and striving to promote and enhance their health condition. Nursing incorporates many components and responsibilities. For instance, this activity presupposes preventive measures that help to avoid serious problems in the future. If the correct method of preventing the deterioration in the patient’s health condition is found, the person will have many more opportunities for avoiding certain health issues and leading a normal lifestyle.
Another crucial responsibility of nursing is relieving people’s suffering and pain with the help of putting the right diagnosis and suggesting the most effective treatment. The sooner such treatment is started, the better a person will feel, and the shorter the process of getting him or her to a good state of health will be. An essential part of the nursing profession is advocacy in care. A nurse should function as an advocate not only for the individual patients’ health but also for the families and groups of people. Moreover, there are populations and communities with special health needs that need to be dealt with by the people working in the sphere of nursing.
Nursing is so much more than just a profession. It is dedicating one’s life to making the lives of other people happier and more comfortable. Even if a patient cannot be cured, his or her stay at the hospital needs to be filled with kindness, care, and all the methods available to relieve the suffering. It is not enough to know the medical side of the profession. To be good at nursing, one needs to be patient, kind, sympathetic, understanding, and caring. While in other professions, it may be enough to know the theory, in nursing, the practical side is also rather crucial.
Therefore, in my understanding, nursing is a combination of a variety of personal and professional features, the combination of which leads to organizing the best care about the patients. This job is one of the noblest ones, and I am proud and thrilled to belong to the profession.
The Nature of Human Caring
Human caring was most elaborately identified by Jean Watson in her theory of nursing (Watson, 2012). I think that everyone has a general notion of what caring is. However, I have my personal view on it, too. First of all, for me, human caring presupposes always “being there” for patients, encouraging them, and giving them faith and support. Also, human caring incorporates building and evolving relationships full of trust and understanding.
A caring nurse is not only the one who looks after the patients. It is also a person who educates them about their health condition and teaches them how to cope with various situations. An important element of human caring is creative. This requirement presupposes coming up with a variety of possible solutions and choosing the most suitable one, as well as teaching the patient about these options.
In my opinion, a caring professional is the one who demonstrates sympathy, compassion, and kindness. Also, such professionals should not be judgmental or prejudiced and should treat all patients as equals. Human caring requires constant work on enhancing one’s professional and personal traits. It is impossible to work in the field of nursing merely on the basis of love for medicine. Love to the people is what should be in the first place. Not only should nurses be open to communication and assistance, but also they need to sustain and develop the best features that will help them to make the patients’ lives more comfortable. Thus, the nature of human caring is complex and elaborate.
The Nature of Nursing Practice
Since nursing comprises a variety of professionals and responsibilities, there are many relationships and actions included in nursing practice (Kim, 2015). The range of professional activities in nursing includes, but is not limited to, deciding the most suitable and beneficial way of treatment, taking care of the patients while they are staying at the hospital, and teaching them and their families about the best ways of looking after the people after they have been discharged.
However, I am convinced that it is not these activities that make nursing practice the most effective one. In my opinion, it is the sequence and combination of such measures that make the process of recovery easier for the patient. Whenever the nurse is doing something for the patient, he or she should see this activity as a part of a bigger process or environment of healing. Thus, the best nursing practice is not merely knowing the theory or being able to apply it in practice. It is about coming up with the best combination of approaches to reach the most beneficial patient outcomes.
The Social Purpose of Nursing
In my nursing philosophy, the social role of nursing is making sure that the needs of patients as social individuals are being met after the sequence of procedures undertaken in the process of treatment. The first and foremost social purpose is to return or keep the patient’s health at a level that will not cause any trouble keeping the personal and professional life which one had before being admitted to the hospital.
The nurse should do his or her best to make the patient feel better in the process of treatment. If a person undergoes some serious operation that impacts any physical or mental abilities needed to accommodate in the society, it is the nurse’s job to teach the patient how to deal with the newly appeared circumstances.
Nursing is not only about making people’s physical condition better. It is also about making sure that the patients may return to their normal lifestyles after they leave the hospital. The social purpose of nursing incorporates helping people to overcome their problems and uncertainties and be able to fulfill their previous social duties in spite of their health issues. I think that this purpose of nursing is no less important than the healing process itself.
References
Kim, H. S. (2015). The essence of nursing practice: Philosophy and perspective. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.
Watson, J. (2012). Human caring science: A theory of nursing (2nd ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.