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Philosophy of Nursing Practice Essay

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Compassion and Caring: My Philosophy of Nursing Practice In nursing, it is important to have a personal philosophy of the profession. It dictates how a person deals with the day-to-day tasks and obstacles that nurses will face. Patient populations are ever-changing, with some much sicker than others, and various lengths of stay expected. The nurse will encounter different cultures and beliefs in their practice, some contrary to their own. Their philosophy of nursing will be evident with how they handle the various aspects of the job. One thing that all patients have in common is that they are in a vulnerable situation. They are in the hospital, many confined to their room or bed. Some have family with them. Others must face their…show more content…
I knew that I did not want to be like that, but that I wanted to take care of sick people and be there for them. I wanted to be the nurse that was able to have a conversation with her patients and still manage to keep them healthy.
Essence of Nursing The core of nursing is and should be knowledgeable patient care. The nurse should be well rounded and possess enough knowledge to know not only the technical aspect of patient care, but also how to tend to the patients’ emotional needs. Kagan, Smith, Cowling & Chinn (2009) say “It can be argued that the overemphasized focus on technological and medical interventions rather than on services underpinned by caring practices and humanist nursing values puts the health of all humans at risk” (p. 75). While medical interventions are necessary, the nurse is responsible for carrying out those interventions in a humane and caring way. If the focus is on the technical side of nursing, the patient as a person is easily forgotten. I believe that to truly care for a patient, the nurse must act as a patient advocate. In more recent times, the nurses’ role as a patient advocate is expanding and becoming more widely recognized. Influential authors have shown that nurse’s role is to speak up for a patient when they are not able to speak up for themselves. Ann Hamric (as cited in Mahlin 2010, p. 248) says that a nurse’s
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