Personal Conceptual Framework for Nursing - Essay Example

Running Head Personal Conceptual Framework for Nursing Paper Personal Conceptual Framework for Nursing Paper Nursing philosophy determines the way of thinking and professional values followed by a nurse all her life. The main dimension of a nursing profession involves moral and ethical principles, cultural knowledge and competences, caring and delegation. These fundamental issues play a part in the nursing profession. Health, love, and religion are other such values important for competent nurse. These dimensions maximize potential of a nurse and her interaction of the broad environment, an individual and his family. The main dimensions of nursing conceptual framework represent a 'mixture' of general ethical and morals rules linked to individual and his role in society. Every professional nurse should have a clear understanding of her nursing philosophy and values, professional requirements and responsibilities. All aspects of nursing (e.g. education, practice, management and research) have a profound ethical dimension. The ethical and moral dimension is distinguished from other dimensions of nursing by the inherent moral demands. Quality assurance has become a leading goal of health care delivery, the effect of public alarm over the high cost of care and the aim of offering the best care. The concept of caring is one of the most important and unique because it goes back to ancient times and determines the nature of nursing profession. The term caring means "nurturing and loving support of a person" (Yoder-Wise 2005, p. 7). The concept of nursing that has been evolving throughout the ages has not yet reached its fullest maturity. It continues to grow and develop to include widening spheres of nursing service and practice and expanding functions. Nursing has its origin in the mother-care of helpless infants and must have coexisted with this type of care from earliest times. Frequently this referred to a woman who suckled a child who was not her own, that is, a wet nurse. The maternal instinct provided that strong impulse or motive necessary to care for those who were suffering or helpless. Consequently, the nurse as a loving mother who intuitively comforts and renders care continues to be a popular image (Burns and Grove 2005). The parental instinct more accurately describes this strong motive and is present in both sexes of all races and within different age-groups. This concept reflects individual-nurse relations and importance of strict values and moral rules in this profession (Yoder-Wise 2005). The ethical and moral dimension is a care of nursing profession. Healthcare ethics is based on philosophical ideas go back to ancient time. Philosophy, no less than medicine, was transformed in the early modern period under the impact of science, and researchers might see the existence of "moral philosophy" as such as consequent on the cultural changes brought about by the scientific revolution. Introducing as they did a comprehensive secular version of the world, the modern sciences created a demand for a secular version of the ethical doctrines previously encoded within religion. This dimension is closely connected with concepts of health and wellbeing, an individual and society. Values are defined as 'broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others' (Thomasma 2004, p. 8). Ethics means 'a set of moral and ethical principles which determine right and wrong actions' (Thomasma 2004, p. 10). For a nurse, medical ethics raises the question of how her activities affect the behavior of individuals and the values of society, and concerns important ethical questions about the role of medical staff in the management process and healthcare delivery. Heifetz explains ethics as a mixture of morals, customs and values, and laws: Moral issues arise whenever human action or inaction affects others. Customs and values reflect the moral underpinning of a society. Morality speaks to what is right or wrong in human relationships, how we should treat others and how others ought to treat us, how each individual should behave in a social order" (17 cited Thomasma 2004, 98). For a nurse, crucial ethical issues are involved not just in the great questions of life and death but also in those clinical decisions which at first sight appear to be the simplest and most straightforward. Healthcare culture is built up as the deep biological forces that conceived us send inchoate and emotive signals which we can then rationally organize in scientific ways. The interest in medical ethics represents a response to a perception in the community that medicine has somehow lost touch with its original purposes that it has been transformed into an efficient instrument for achieving technical goals, with little regard to their human or social implications (Thomasma, 2004). Another important dimension of nursing profession is cultural knowledge and cultural values. Taylor, A cultural anthropologist defines culture as: It is hardly necessary to consider culture a mystic entity that exists outside the society and of its individual carriers, and that moves mysteriously by its own force. The life of society is carried on by individuals who act singly and jointly under the stress of their own activities" (cited Thomasma 2004, p. 34). For a modern nurse cultural competence is very important because it helps to deal with and understand unique values of diverse patients and their families. With a diversity of cultural as well as racial and ethnic groups, group differences are acknowledged, but in transitional terms. That is, group members are expected to internalize values. Multicultural environment demands cultural competent nurses able to communicate and support patients from different cultural groups. The concept of environment involves resources, conditions external stimuli that affect both a patients and medical staff. Cultural environment means cultural differences and values which have a great impact on the patient and communication process with a nurse. At the same time, in the community generally, the complexity of medical practice has become more widely appreciated (Nettina, 2005). This has given rise to some disquiet among many practicing clinicians, because the body of thought in question often appears to present the ethical discussions as abstract and divorced from the real concerns of doctors and patients, with many of the most important issues being obscured or passed over. Consequently, the ethical analysis does not always contribute to the actual decision-making process. Delegation allows nurses to avoid routine tasks and meet the needs of diverse customer groups. Delegation is defined as: "transfer of a task to another person" (Yoder-Wise 2005, p. 29). Nurses delegate tasks to non-medical professionals and for this reason they should pay a special attention to skills and knowledge of these subordinates. Thus, members of the nursing profession cannot escape these demands or the stringent responsibilities they impose. One reason for this is that no nursing decision or action (no matter how small or trivial) occurs in a moral vacuum, or is free of moral risk or consequence. Even the most 'ordinary' of nursing actions can affect significantly the wellbeing, welfare and moral interests of others. This is so whether in a nursing education, practice, management or research setting. Nursing codes of ethics around the world have made explicit that nurses have a stringent moral responsibility to promote and safeguard the wellbeing, welfare and moral interests of people needing and/or receiving nursing care. These codes also variously recognize the responsibility of nurses to balance the needs and interests of different people equally in health care contexts (Yoder-Wise 2005). The task of a nurse is to help a patient overcome illness and maintain a healthy lifestyle. In this case, managerial skills and professional knowledge play a crucial role in nursing process. Health means absence of illness and diseases. Health is, nevertheless, notoriously difficult to define, for many reasons, but particularly because it has come to be identified with all welfare and the highest good. But clearly there are values, like love and art, that are possible with only a minimum of health, and to which health in its fullness is constantly being sacrificed; hence this identification cannot stand. If "Illness can be taken to mean the experiences of disease, including the feelings relating to changes in bodily states and the consequences of having to bear that ailment; illness, therefore, relates to a way of being for the individual concerned" (Radley cited Yoder-Wise 2005, p. 87). In the shaping of her or his recognition and appreciation of illness, the individual is interacting with her or his environment and significant others. Seeking medical help becomes merely one possible response to illness. In the vast majority of cases, however, medical attention is not sought when feeling ill. That is, most illness is dealt with by individuals themselves without any recourse to formal help from doctors or other health-care workers. Health cannot be identified with self-preservation, for the test of health is not solely the power to withstand disease and danger, but fullness of energy. The invalid kept alive by medical science at low vitality is not in health. Health of mind is as important as health, of body, for insanity and unresolved emotional conflicts endanger life and depress vitality. A nurse should recognize these conditions and help a patient to overcome illness and disease (Amirkhanyan, 2007). Healthcare means not only the choice of words but also the manner of their delivery: the tone of the voice, facial expressions, and so on. In addition, there is the degree of interest and compassion demonstrated when the more intimate matters are discussed (American Nursing Association 2007). During the physical examination, there is the general bearing that the doctor adopts and, in particular, the way in which those parts of it in which the patient might feel most vulnerable are conducted. Here, small matters may be very important: the time taken, the communication of commitment and concern, the sensitivity of the touch. "When the patient's beliefs-religious, cultural, or otherwise-run counter to medical recommendations, the physician is obliged to try to understand clearly the beliefs and the viewpoints of the patient" (Peabody cited Yoder-Wise 2005, p. 74). In sum, health is a governing value in human life, no one in these days when the promotion of health has become a cult will deny. Nursing profession is based on the ideas of health and ethical values, cultural knowledge and cultural competences. Deciding and acting morally in a conflicted world, dealing constructively with moral controversy, finding satisfactory solutions to moral disagreements and coping effectively with moral distress are all complex, perplexing and demanding tasks. References 1. American Nursing Association (2007). Retrieved 01 November 2007, from http://nursingworld.org/ 2. Amirkhanyan, A.A. (2007). The Smart-Seller Challenge: Exploring the Determinants of Privatizing Public Nursing Homes. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 17 (3), 501. 3. Nettina, S.M. (2005). Lippincott Manual of Nursing Practice. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 8 edition. 4. Thomasma, D. (2004). Health Care Ethics: Critical Issues for the 21st Century, 2nd Edn. Jones & Bartlett. 5. Yoder-Wise, P.S. (2005). Leading and Managing in Nursing. Mosby; 4 edition Appendix Nursing Framework Nursing process Nursing Ethics and Moral Principles Read More