My Philosophy Of Nursing: Thinking, Doing And Caring
Nursing. . . you hear the word and many things come to mind; education, hard work, blood, guts, disgusting, caring, helping, healing, sacrifice… etc. In this myriad of phrases, the idea of nursing I fell in love with, is helping and caring for my fellow human being, treating patients the way I would like to be treated or better yet, as they want to be treated. Caring for patients as if they were my own family and know them as real people with loved ones and, lives instead of just a patient in a bed. I have always wanted to be a nurse. As a child one of my favorite books was about Florence nightingale/ the lady with the lamp. When I would play Army with my five brothers, as they got hurt on our childhood battle fields, I would nurse them back to health so, they could go back out and fight for the cause.
Nursing has been a big part of my life. My mother is a (Clark College graduate) nurse who started her education and nursing career in her late thirties and early forties when I was 12 years old. I come from a family of eight children, I remember my mom studying many nights in a make shift room my dad built for her in the garage when she could find quiet time. I watched her stress when kids were sick or hurt, struggle with being a wife, a mother, having a family, being student nurse, and keeping all of it balanced while she was in school. She has been a true inspiration to me as I watched the sacrifice, tears and triumphs of someone so dear to me. I have asked her would she do it all again? Undoubtably her answer has always been … YES! I feel that same passion when I talk about being a nurse and knowing that I am two short years away from being part of something I was born to do. Two years seems like a lifetime right now, but it has taken me a lifetime to get here. Nursing to me is learning about the patient, listening, giving kind words, respect, dignity and making them comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. I believe in the clinical part as well, but my theory is the whole person as well as the symptom, or disease. I feel the theorist I am most in line with is Jean Watson and her theory of human caring (Treas, Wilkinson, Barnett, & Smith, 2018).
Like Watson I feel the medical side is necessary and the humanistic side is vital to the patients healing process (Treas, Wilkinson, Barnett, & Smith, 2018). To make a patient feel like a person that matters. To treat them with equanimity no matter of age, background, ethnicity, belief or socioeconomical status. Watsons key values are as follows: forming a humanistic-altruistic system of values, Instilling faith and hope, cultivating sensitivity to self and others, forming helping and trusting relationships, conveying and accepting the expression of positive and negative feelings, systematically using the scientific problem-solving method that involves caring process, promoting transpersonal teaching-learning, providing for supportive; protective; and corrective mental, physical, sociocultural, and spiritual environment, assisting with gratification of human needs, sensitivity to existential-phenomenological forces (Treas, Wilkinson, Barnett, & Smith, 2018).
I feel I can provide exceptional care when I understand the patient. By getting to know a little about them and understand where they are coming from and where they have been in life. If the patient decides not to be pleasant and does not care for my style of practice, or even like me at all, I will try to understand them with the best of my ability and give the utmost quality care I can provide. In conclusion I believe even if we have positive or negative interactions, I am there to educate the patient, promote the healing process and see that it is provided with care and compassion without bias or exclusion.z
