Running head: PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY OF NURSING 1

Personal Philosophy of Nursing

Cara Lucy

Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing

NUR 4142 - Synthesis for Nursing Practice

March 22, 2017

I have neither given nor received aid, other than acknowledged, on this assignment, nor have I

seen anyone else do so.

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Personal Philosophy of Nursing

Defining nursing is relatively simple, however, truly embodying nursing is challenging.

In my opinion, the true definition of nursing is encompassed within each individual nurse. Over

time, nurses develop a personal nursing philosophy that evolves from their own experiences,

beliefs, and values, and serves as the foundation that governs their entire practice as a nurse. As

a student and future employee of Bon Secours, my overall beliefs and values about nursing have

been greatly influenced by the mission, values, and philosophy statement of Bon Secours

Memorial College of Nursing (BSMCON). My personal philosophy of nursing is reflected in

my every day nursing practice, and most closely aligns with the Bon Secours tenets of nursing,

health, and caring (BSMCON, 2016).

The tenet of nursing is important to me because I truly believe that nursing is both an art

and a science, constantly changing and adapting to best serve the population at need. According

to the American Nurses Association (ANA), Nursing is a dynamic profession, blending

evidence-based practice with intuition, caring, and compassion to provide quality care (2010, p.

115). Nurses must have knowledge, the scientific side of nursing, as well as compassion, the

artistic side of nursing. It is important for nurses to be lifelong learners that constantly seek and

apply new evidence based practice while caring for our patients. Our clients must be cared for in

a holistic manor in order to prevent diseases, provide comfort, and maintain a state of overall

well-being for our patients. The health tenet is essential to nursing, and is the foundation for my

personal nursing practice. According to Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing, health is a

dynamic state of being on a wellness-illness continuum that is accomplished through a balance

of the mind, body, and spirit (2016, p. 50). In order for our patients to achieve good health, we

must provide them with proper care to ensure that each patients basic needs are met, regardless
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of who they are. I believe that all nurses should strive to promote the health of the individual and

society regardless of cultural background, value system, religious belief, gender, sexual identity, or

disability (ANA, 2010, p. 26). In my opinion, caring is the most important tenet of all, and should

be the basis for all nursing practice. At its most basic level, nursing is a human-caring, relational

profession. It exists by virtue of an ethical-moral ideal, and commitment to provide care for

others (Watson, 1995, p. 67). Caring requires the nurse to acknowledge the difference between

curing and healing. Curing, which is not always possible, means attempting to eliminate a specific

disease and its physical symptoms. Healing, on the other hand, is always possible, and means

restoring the balance between the patients mind, body, spirit, and environment. Caring means

having compassion, listening, educating, supporting, advocating, and being present for your patients

and their families. Regardless of how much knowledge and experience a nurse has, we can always

work towards the tenet of caring.

My personal philosophy of nursing is reflected in my nursing practice with every patient I

care for, and I hope that never changes. Working in the Emergency Department this semester

really allowed me to reflect on the tenets of my philosophy. Patients in the Emergency

Department are usually very scared, upset, or angry about their condition. As a nurse, my goal is

to immediately provide them with a caring presence and help comfort them. I do this by

immediately introducing myself, providing therapeutic touch as we interact, and listening to their

expressed needs. Whenever I am assigned a new patient, I also perform a triage assessment that

looks at the patient holistically. This allows me to not only determine what the patients chief

complaint is that brought them to the hospital, but also helps me identify any information about

their background, family, living environment, cultural or religious preferences, physical or

cognitive impairments that may need extra care, and any other significant information. The
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Emergency Department is a very busy environment, and it is easy to let yourself become task

oriented as you speed in and out of patients rooms. As a nurse, I try to make sure I take time to

talk with my patients about what is happening, address any concerns they have, and let them

know that I am there to help them in any way. Additionally, I strive to learn something from

every patient that I care for, so that I can better care for my future patients to come. I recently

had a patient that came into the Emergency Department on a very busy day. The patient was in

atrial fibrillation, and was informed that a cardioversion would be done to try and fix it. After

the doctor left the room, I could immediately tell that the patient and his wife were distraught

over this news. The wife started crying, and the patient stated that he wasnt sure if he wanted to

go through with the procedure. I stopped what I was doing to sit next to the patients wife and

tried to calm her down. I educated her about what was going on with her husbands heart, why it

wasnt pumping effectively, and how a cardioversion would potentially fix it. I explained that

this wouldnt be like the chaotic medical shows you see on TV, and that this was a very

controlled, safe environment. I also explained that her husband would be sedated and wouldnt

feel any pain, and that I would come find her as soon as we were done. She immediately calmed

down and thanked me, and the patient decided to have the procedure. Once the patients wife

was out of the room, he thanked me for comforting her, and told me there was no way he could

have gone through with the procedure with his wife that upset. By creating a healing

environment for the patient and his wife, we were able to restore the balance between his mind

and body, and ultimately improve his overall well-being.

Although I still have the same core values and beliefs as I did at the beginning of my

nursing education, my outlook and appreciation for them have grown significantly. In the

beginning of my nursing career, I identified caring, compassion, and respect as values that were
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very important to me. These values have become even more important to me as I approach my

new career as a nurse. I now realize that these values are not only important to apply to your

patients, but also to your coworkers, your family, and yourself.

In her book, From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice,

Patricia Benner describes the different stages of the learning process that nurses go through using

the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition (Benner, 2001). She describes nursing as a continuous

leaning process in which nurses gain knowledge (knowing that) as well as skills (knowing how)

through many different experiences. Benner uses the Dreyfus Model to explain that as nurses

develop certain skills during situational experiences, they progress through five levels of

proficiency: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert (2001, p. 13). Each

level builds upon the previous one, and reflects changes in many aspects of the nurses

performance.

The first level of acquisition is novice. Novice nurses have no experience, and are very

task oriented based on principles learned in the classroom. They are very inflexible, and are not

yet able to distinguish significant pieces of information from the entire picture. Since they have

no previous experience, novice nurses learn best when their patients condition is explained to

them using objective and measureable data (Benner, 2001, p. 21). The second level of

acquisition is advanced beginner. The advanced beginner nurse is able to recognize reoccurring

aspects that are significant, and use them to formulate their own principles and guidelines. These

nurses have minor experience, and still need assistance with things such as setting priorities

(Benner, 2001, p. 24). The third level of acquisition, known as competent, occurs after a nurse

has two to three years of experience in a specific work area. Competent nurses are more aware

of their long-term objectives, and can effectively plan and prioritize care for multiple patients.
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Although the competent nurse is organized, they still lack speed and flexibility (Benner, 2001, p.

27). The fourth level of acquisition is proficient, and is found in nurses with three to five years

of experience in the same area. The proficient nurse has a more holistic understanding of

situations, and uses past experiences to recognize and respond to specific events. During this

stage, nurses transform from someone simply managing care by performing tasks, to someone

analyzing and responding in order to provide safe, quality care (Benner, 2001, p. 31). The fifth

and last level of acquisition is expert, and is characterized by a nurse that is no longer aware of

features and rules, and his/her performance becomes fluid and flexible and highly proficient

(Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1977; as cited by Benner, 2001, pg. 34). Nurses at this level have an

intuitive understanding of clinical situations, and anticipate potential complications based on

what is occurring with their specific patient rather than what occurs with other patients in

general. Expert nurses have the ability to organize, plan, and coordinate multiple patient needs

and requests and to reshuffle their priorities in the midst of constant patient changes (Benner,

2001, p. 149). Not all nurses will reach the expert level of acquisition, however, it is something

that all nurses should strive for.

When I first began working in the Emergency Department for my Immersion, my lack of

experience and task oriented behavior made it obvious that I was still in the novice stage of skill

acquisition. With every new patient, I would listen as my preceptor asked questions and

performed her assessments. I had the ability to do things such as EKGs, IVs, and blood draws,

but I wasnt confident enough to actually do them until my preceptor told me to. My focus was

geared towards completing every task that my preceptor asked me to do, and never analyzed the

reason behind each of those tasks. Now that I am almost done with my Immersion, I feel that the

advanced beginner level of acquisition most accurately represents my professional development.

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Working in the Emergency Department has not only allowed me to experience a wide range of

diagnoses, but it has also given me a better understanding of the many typical or atypical

symptoms associated with these diagnoses. Using the concepts I learned in school in addition to

the situations I have now experienced in Immersion, I am able to quickly assess situations and

determine what needs to be done without my preceptors instruction. My goal is not only to

progress to the level of a competent nurse, but to progress towards the level of an expert nurse.

During my new hire orientation, I will take advantage of having a preceptor and ask as many

questions as possible. Once my orientation is over, I will remain eager and always ask questions,

even if it means exploring the answers myself. I will opportunities for growth whenever

possible. I will be active in professional organizations, and maintain as many professional

licenses and certifications as possible. Most importantly, I will keep my job in the Emergency

Department in order to continue building upon previously knowledge and experiences.

Since the beginning of my nursing education, my values and philosophy have grown

tremendously. Initially, I thought I would learn how to interpret symptoms, identify pathological

problems, and treat different diseases and their physical symptoms. While I did learn about

those things during my education, I also learned how to holistically care for people, and

ultimately how to heal. Defining nursing is relatively simple, however, truly embodying nursing

is challenging. Nursing is so much more than taking blood pressures, administering medications,

and charting patient assessments. As Virginia Henderson stated, the nurse is temporarily the

consciousness of the unconscious; the love of life for the suicidal; the leg for the amputee; the

eyes of the newly blind; a means of locomotion for the newborn; knowledge and confidence for

the young mother; a voice for those too weak or withdrawn to speak (Henderson, 1966, p. 16).
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References

American Nurses Association. (2010). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (2nd ed.).

Silver Spring, MD: American Nurses Association.

Benner, P. (2001). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice

(commemorative ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing (2016). 2016-2017 college catalog. Retrieved from

http://bsmcon.edu/sites/default/files/files/BON_Catalog_2016_Web(1).pdf

Henderson V. (1966). The nature of nursing: A definition and its implications for practice,

research, and education: reflections after 25 years. Macmillan, NY: National League for

Nursing Press.

Watson, J. (1995). Nursings caring-healing paradigm as exemplar for alternative medicine.

Alternative Therapies, 1(30), 64-69.