Personal Theoretical Framework for Advanced Practice Nursing

Assignment Instructions

Discuss a personal nursing philosophy.  Apply what you have learned about nursing theory in this course.  Identify a nursing philosophy that best matches your personal philosophy.  Discuss a nursing framework or theory that fits that philosophy including how it fits your personal philosophy.   Identify a possible situation in which that framework or theory would be a poor fit and discuss why it is a poor fit for that situation.  While it is an important skill to be able to match a theory with a situation, it is also critical to understand when a theory or framework does not fit a situation.

Personal Theoretical Framework for Advanced Practice Nursing – Sample Paper

Nursing is a caring profession that focuses on helping individual patients to cope with changes brought about by their health changes. My nursing philosophy is that a nurse should employ his or her knowledge, skills and experience to care for patients with love, compassion, kindness, respect, and empathy, and to teach patients self-care, with intention of restoring their health, helping them cope with health changes and improving their quality of life. Nurses in my philosophy should focus on offering their nursing care services with a lot of devotion and love, with the intention of helping patients to find a reason to live another day. They should be a source of hope for the hopeless patients, they should be able to restore their will to live, to accept and cope with changes coming with their health changes, and make them face health difficulties without losing hope. Nurses should use their caring knowledge gain during their studies and practice to offer the best intervention care to patients so as to improve on their health and well-being.

Read also Advanced Practice Nursing And How it Differs From Nursing Practice

The identified philosophy matches the caring philosophy in nursing. Caring according to Adams (2016) is the quality that contains our actual nature of being human. It is a primary human attribute that individuals show toward one another. Caring is regarded as an altruistic feeling or act of concern for other people. Caring is one of the utmost basics in nursing, that Florence Nightingale introduced as the core to nursing. Caring in nursing happens via two basic domains that include one as the caring act or a noun for other individuals when not able to care for themselves. Caring in nursing can also occur as an adjective for being a nurse who is caring. This mostly happens when a nurse shows concern, kindness, and compassion actions. Based on its actual definition, caring is regarded to be the central theme fundamental to nursing. Although caring is not distinctive to nursing, it includes all descriptive attributes of a helping profession, a human and nursing. Caring is, in this case, demonstrates responsibility, intimacy, and trust, which are elements considered to be significant to professional relationships. Based on the caring philosophy, nursing is regarded as a caring science, where human beings are linked to one another in the process of caring. Caring entails being there for the family or patient in whatever manner it is required at the time. This can entails being there to assist an ill patient to regain medical stability and enhance patient recovery, as well as preparing the family and individual for discharge by modifying care to fit the circumstance and supporting family via this transition (Adams, 2016). 

Read also Example Of An Ethical Dilemma In Advanced Practice Registered Nursing

My nursing philosophy is highly based on the Watson nursing theory. Watson’s theory of human caring focuses on nursing and the human paradigm. This theory postulates that human being cannot be restored as an object. On the contrary, it argues that human being is part of self, nature, environment, and the bigger universe. In Watson’s theory, the environment is described as peaceful, beautiful, and comfortable, and that caring is an ethical idea which entails engagement of mind-body-soul with one another. Watson classifies nursing as a humanitarian science and typified as a profession that performs aesthetical, personal, ethical, and scientific practice. It thus relates to my worldview that focuses on ethical aspects of caring that include respect, love, kindness, and compassion in care. Watson’s of human caring theory aims to guarantee harmony and balance between illness and health experiences of an individual (Ozan, Okumus & Lash, 2015).   

Read also Watson’s Theory And Orem Theory – Comparing And Contrasting Nursing Theories

The core concept in Watson’s theory is care. Caring, in this case, includes care about and care for a patient. Watson’s human caring theory focuses on ensuring that caring is the main nursing goal.  To be able to conduct a caring act, nurses require scientific and artistic expertise and knowledge. Nursing education plays an essential role in the advancement and acquisition of caring attributes and this need to be stressed in their professional lives. According to Watson, nurses caring behavior can contribute to the patients’ well-being and satisfaction, and is more than just the healthcare organization’s performance, or a particular form of human-to-human contact and professional. When caring is absent, dissatisfaction with care and non-caring outcomes, where the patient feels like an object can happen. Watson identifies caring as the ideal nursing moral in which the end is preservation, enhancement, and protection of human dignity. Respectful and trustful interpersonal relationships are highly essential for human dignity preservation. Watson’s theory is based on carative factors, where ten carative factors of compassion/caring-centered-heart-love are central to caring (Alligood, 2014).

Read also Caring According To Nursing Theories and Patients Lived Experiences

Carative factors enhance and support the caring experience of the patients. Watson’s carative aspects are perceived as nurse-patient modalities and interactions which can be utilized to enhance and support the experience of real occasion of caring. These carative factors said to consist of nurturing the practice of equanimity and loving-kindness toward self and others as introductory to Caritas consciousness; managing sacred acts of nursing of caring-healing by nurturing to the primary human needs; creatively utilizing self and all manners of knowing as section of the caring process; trying to stay within the patient’s reference frame; sustaining and developing a caring, helping-trusting relationship; being supportive of, and present to , the expression of negative and positive feelings; cultivating individual own transpersonal self and spiritual practices, going past the personal ego; engaging in honest teaching-learning experience which deal with the unity of subjective meaning and being; Attending and opening to mysterious and spiritual and existential unknowns of death and life; and generating a healing settings at all levels (Pajnkihar, Stiglic & Vrbnjak, 2017). 

The Watson theory of care fits in my nursing philosophy in that my philosophy advocates for the use of nursing knowledge, skills, and experience to offer care to the patient, while Watson’s theory is based on care as the central aspect of nursing. The two thus embrace care as the basic activity in nursing. The two also embrace respect for human dignity as my philosophy advocates for caring for patients with a high level of respect, compassion, love, kindness, and empathy. Watson also advocates the development of a trusting relationship between nurses and patients, which can only be propagated by treating patients more like humans than objects. The above virtues embraced in my philosophy will play a great role in promoting the development of a trust-based relationship. The two also embrace education in nursing to enhance the high quality of care. The philosophy advocates for the use of earned skills, knowledge and experience when caring for a patient, while Watson’s theory also recognizes nursing as a scientific and artistic professional where knowledge and skills are highly embraced. The two thus advocates for the best nursing care with a high sense of humanity, respect of ethical value and anticipation of better patient outcomes.

The philosophy would play a great role in enhancing nursing care for any kind of patient. However, it would be a poor fit in a self-care situation. The philosophy does not feature an aspect of training patients or individuals to take care of themselves to prevent diseases or to promote their health in times of sickness. It only centers on caring for patients who are in need of nursing care. This means the philosophy does not focus on how it can help in building patient’s knowledge to be able to manage their health issues, especially in a situation where a patient is suffering from a chronic situation that will require constant monitoring of body functionality and regular medication among other thing. Although the philosophy embraces the aspect of helping patients to cope with new health issues, it does not clearly state that this can be done by training patients to cater for their needs. It can be taken to imply that the nurses help patients in accepting their situation; psychologically, and hence resulting in an optimistic outlook of their health situation. Although one of the Watson’s Caritas factor centers on teaching-learning activity, it does not clearly focus on promoting patient’s knowledge to self-care but mostly deal with the unity of subjective meaning and being. Thus both Watson’s theory and my philosophy are a poor fit for self-care kind of nursing.

Get Your Custom Paper From Professional Writers. 100% Plagiarism Free, No AI Generated Content and Good Grade Guarantee. We Have Experts In All Subjects.

Place Your Order Now
Scroll to Top