Nurse and Patient - Essay Example

Caring according to Boykin & Schoenhofer (2001) is viewed as a dynamic process existing within shared experiences between a nurse and a patient (p. 11). Florence Nightingale described caring as the basic foundation of nursing practice. Caring manifests itself through various acts such as meeting the patient's stated and unstated needs, being hopeful, and listening empathetically among others. However, even though caring is a highly regarded virtue in nursing practice, instances when nurses failed to provide proper care have been numerous, and most patients bear witness to such treatment.

For instance, during my internship period in the hospital, I happened to witness one such incident where a comatose patient needed to be fed through a nasogastric tube every three hours according to the feeding regime posted above the patient’s bed. The whole day’s feeds were still intact, and it was already past 4 pm in the afternoon. The relatives of the patient just sat next to the bed as they did not know how to feed their loved ones through the tube. A look at the patient’s blood glucose levels showed alarming results since the patient was starving and would die if he was not fed immediately. This showed gross misconduct of the nurses and went against the theory of Nursing as caring as described by Watson (Hills & Watson 256). The theory was made on the assumption that persons, in this case, nurses, are caring by virtue of their humanness.

All in all, I learned that all it could have taken to relieve the patient’s suffering and increase the chances of recovery was to feed the patient on time. If we can all perform our duties as required, it would help to prevent unnecessary deaths in hospitals.