Concepts of Nursing - Essay Example

In the late 20th century, much of the theoretical work in nursing focused on articulating relationships among four major concepts: person, environment, health, and nursing. Because these four concepts can be superimposed on almost any work in nursing, they are sometimes collectively referred to as meta paradigms for nursing.

Concepts of Nursing (Kozier, B. et.al., 2004):

Patient

The recipients of nursing are sometimes called consumers, sometimes patients, and sometimes clients. A consumer is an individual, a group of people, or a community that uses a service or commodity. People who use healthcare products or services are consumers of healthcare.

People become patients when they seek assistance because of illness or surgery. Some nurses believe that the word patient implies passive acceptance of the decisions and care of health professionals. With the emphasis on health promotion and prevention of illness, many recipients of nursing care are not ill. Moreover, nurses interact with family members and others to provide support, information, and comfort in addition to caring for the patient.

For these reasons, nurses increasingly refer to recipients of health care as clients. A client is a person who engages the advice or service of another who is qualified to provide this service. The term client presents the receivers of health care as collaborators in the care, that is, as people who are also responsible for their own health.

Nursing(p.7-8)

Certain themes are common to many definitions of nursing:

Nursing is caring, an art; a science; is client-centered; holistic; adaptive; concerned with health promotion, health maintenance, and health restoration; and a helping profession.

In 1995, the American Nurses Association (ANA) recognized the influence and contribution of the science of caring to nursing philosophy and practice. Their most recent definition of nursing acknowledges a few essential features of contemporary nursing practice. (p.8)

Nursing practice involves four areas: promoting health and wellness, preventing illness, restoring health, and caring for the dying.

Health (p.17-173)

People’s health beliefs influence their health practices. Thus a nurse’s health values and practices may differ from those of a client. Nurses need to ensure that a plan of care developed for an individual relates to the client's conception of health.

Models of health include the clinical model, the role performance model, the eudemonistic model, the agent-host-environment model, and health-illness continua.

Environment (p.177)

People are becoming increasingly aware of their environment and how it affects their health and level of wellness. Geographic location determines climate, and climate affects health. For instance, malaria and malaria-related conditions occur more frequently in tropical rather than temperature climates. Pollution of the water, air, and soil affects the health of cells.

Conclusion

Many consider the four concepts of nursing such as person or client, environment, health, and nursing to be central to nursing.