Metaparadigm Concepts In Nursing

Metaparadigm identifies the phenomena of central interest to a nursing discipline. It is made up of concepts and propositions that define discipline that are extremely abstract. It fails to provide a definite direction for activities like nursing practice and research. Its main function is to identify the basic subject matter of the discipline which are defined by Fawcett (2005) as human beings, environment,

Kristen M. Swanson may not be as well-known as Florence Nightingale in the nursing field, but she has made great contributions with the Theory of Caring that has been used in many hospitals, even internationally, for their framework to guide patient care. Through the study of her practice, I have realized much of her practice is reflected in mine. This paper will present the basic concept of nursing known as the metaparadigm concepts of person, health, environment, and nursing as presented by Swanson, as well as provide my own philosophy of nursing, which in many ways mirrors Swanson’s.

The nursing metaparadigm concepts described by Fawcett (as cited in McEwen & Willis, 2011), are a primary phenomena of interest to a discipline, which identifies globally by ways in which, nursing can deal with those phenomena in a distinctive and applicable manner. The functional aspects of the meta-paradigm according to Kim (as cited in McEwen & Willis, 2011), involve a combination of intellectual and

The purpose of this paper is to explore the personal nursing philosophy I intend to use in my career as a nurse and to explore my values and beliefs about the four metaparadigms – the patient, the nursing practice, their health and the environment, and the discipline of nursing in addition to discussing the nursing concepts relevant to my practice as a nurse practitioner. This paper also discusses the nurse of the future and the Synergy model definitions of the four metaparadigms and how they fit into my personal philosophy.

The metaparadigm of nursing consists of four parts comprised by Jacqueline Fawcett, in 1984, in her seminal work (Alligood, 2014). The metaparadigm she developed served to provide direction and guidance for the nursing framework already in use and became an organization tool for theories already in use (Alligood, 2014). The four parts being person, health, environment, and nursing. The four components of the metaparadigm concept of nursing is important to nursing theory because they are the key areas of focus of patient care, and the metaparadigm is designed to differentiate nursing from other specialties (Alligood, 2014). It is this use of theories that makes nursing a profession and guides professional nursing practice, research, and education (Alligood, 2014).

The purpose of this paper is to discuss my personal beliefs pertaining to the profession of nursing. As well I will discuss the (4) metaparadigms in nursing which are known as; human beings, environment, health, and nursing, and my personal beliefs on these concepts and how they have similarities to the nursing philosophy of a nursing theorist.

A metaparadigms in nursing carefully act like a solid spine that support as a base rock the nursing field. The four essentials components of metaparadigms in nursing are the person, the environment, the patient’s health status and the nursing practice. A nurse practitioner will use all this concepts to assist in advance critical thinking skills by assessing the needs of individual and families while developing a quality cost-effective health promotion and illness prevention care plans.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (Reutter & Kushner, 2010, p. 2). At Mount Royal, the Bachelor of Nursing students use a metaparadigm that has four categories: Environmental Context of Care, Person, Nursing, and Health (Thorne, 2010, p. 66). This metaparadigm describes the “substance and structure of the key bodies of knowledge that would be needed [by nurses] to understand clinical settings” (Thorne, 2010, p. 66). These four categories create the framework for nursing and demonstrate how the environment, the person, nursing, and health are all intertwined. There are several aspects of life that determine the

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon my original definition of nursing metaparadigm concepts critically, and to determine if any changes in my perception towards practice have occurred. The focus of the paper is to critically analyze the transformations that have occurred in my approach to practice. The critical analysis of nursing metaparadigm concepts has resulted in the transformation of my thinking regarding a person, nursing, and environment while my perception regarding the health remains same. Firstly, I discovered the importance of the concept of development in the definition of a person. Secondly, I learned that nursing care should be flexible and should move around the person and their

ANA's definition of nursing supports the metaparadigm theories of nursing. These theories provide guidelines to nurses on their professional practice through implemenation of education and research. Evidence-based research is a conglomoration of "research evidence, experience and expertise, and patient preferences inthe process of clinical care"

In nursing metaparadigm, the “person” refers to the recipient of nursing such as patient, family, or community (Hopp, & Rittenmeyer, 2012, p. 94). In the presented study the “person” component of the nursing metaparadigm consisted of patients with the myocardial infarction and the heart failure and the researchers analyzed factors contributing to their readmission.

Nightingale describes nursing from an ecological perspective, saying that a nurse will put a patient in a way that nature acts best upon them. This is by manipulating the environment to achieve a state of health as the health of a person directly depends on the environment. Roy defines a person as being an adaptive system who keeps changing according to the external and internal system, so she uses stimuli to describe his adaptive system, which is a behavioral model; the patient has to be observed to give the best adaptive response.

Florence Nightingale’s vision of nursing in the mid-1800s began an evolution of nursing philosophies and theories that encouraged the progression and development of nursing knowledge, quality of care, and the advancement of nursing from a vocation to an academic discipline and profession (Alligood, 2013, pp. 3-7). As nursing knowledge and theory flourished, it became necessary to structure nursing theories into an integrated system. Jacqueline Fawcett’s proposal of four global nursing concepts “as a nursing metaparadigm served as an organizing structure for existing nursing frame-works and introduced a way of organizing individual theoretical works in a meaningful structure” (Alligood, 2013, p. 4). The four concepts of the metaparadigm of nursing include: person, environment, health, and nursing. By understanding the history of nursing development and the metaparadigm of nursing, one can explore this author’s personal philosophy of nursing in respect to the four concepts of the metaparadigm of nursing.

Worldviews (paradigms) “frame global assumptions for vocabulary, theories and principles to direct the development of ideas for a domain” (Duff, 2011 p. 3). Scholars believed that paradigms have helped propagate beliefs which has allowed nurses to better understand common world views that belong to the nursing profession (Jacob, 1989, Hinshaw, 1996, Weaver and Olsen, 2005). When nurses share these beliefs, the profession begins to create it’s own identity by agreed upon concepts and theories. Scholars agree that these key concepts are found in the metaparadigm of nursing (person, environment, health/illness and nursing) (Chinn and Kramer, 2008, Mitchell, 2003, Nyatanga, 2005, Pesut & Johnson, 2007). Meleis (2007) explains that the metaparadigm helps define what nursing culture is, which influences the way nurses view the world. Once nurses understand the paradigms that shaped their beliefs, the profession can begin to distinguish itself from other professions (Chinn and Kramer, 2008).

Moore, (Moore, 2008) reported a nursing metaparadigm of four basic concepts: "person, health, environment, and nursing." Another author suggested the core