When faced on a difficult situation, it is undeniable that a person would certainly feel vulnerable and

intimidated. Everyday, we expose ourselves to the environment and with this, we face various scenarios
that affect how we feel and think. Such scenarios are most likely to be observed in a hospital setting. In
hospitals, there are patients who are in need of medical needs and there are also the healthcare
workers who offer care and attend to the needs of the patients. Most of the time, these patients who
seek help are those persons who are vulnerable or susceptible to harm and in need of special care.
These people go into the hospital because they believe that the care that they can get from the hospital
can help them improve, recover, and become healthier and better persons. This mindset of aiming to
get better and improve in life is the start of having self-transcendence.

Self-transcendence is a very important concept in nursing. It is because as nurses understand that each
patient or individual is capable of self-transcending, then the nurses would realize that there is hope in
everyone as long as they have the will and determination to continue moving forward and expand their
personal boundaries. The Theory of Self-Transcendence expressed the importance of facilitating the
well-being and understanding its capacity in the context of difficult health-related experiences. This
means that the theory will serve as a guide for nurses to administer care with the goal of promoting the
well-being of the patient in the midst of difficult life situations just like facing loss or experiencing severe
illnesses. This theory emphasizes that the concepts of vulnerability, self-transcendence and well-being
are interrelated with one another. Self-transcendence is deemed to be the mediator between
vulnerability and well-being in which a person having self-transcendence is capable of maintaining and
promoting his or her well-being despite being highly vulnerable. With this being said, the nurses use the
appropriate nursing interventions to help patients gain self-transcendence most especially to the
patients who are confronted with increased vulnerability. In fact, the patients who believe that they are
highly vulnerable are those who are most likely to self-transcend. It is because these patients are aware
of their conditions and accept the dangers of the situations that they are in. As a result they often seek
for ways to help themselves get out of the undesirable situation and believe that there is hope. For
example, a patient who is experiencing AIDS or Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome is not giving up
and still continues to find ways to live a happier and healthier life. It is known that there is still no cure
for AIDS, but there are medications that can control HIV and prevent complications. If the patient
doesn’t have self-transcendence, then he will easily get discouraged and give up for he knows that there
is no cure for his illness. However, if the patient learns to self-transcend, then he will find the
motivation to consistently follow the treatment to manage his illness. The nurse’s role in this situation is
to monitor the condition of the patient and to facilitate him in the process of self-transcendence. The
patient may not be able to totally get rid of the HIV infection, but with his self-transcendence, he can be
able to fight his illness by taking up medications and continue living a happy and healthy lifestyle.

As nurses face different individuals with varied health conditions, it is important to understand their
different situations in order to know how to help them self-transcend or go beyond their limits for them
to recover and improve. Nursing activities are based on facilitating or assisting the mediating factor of
self-transcendence. This is because self-transcendence leads to an improved quality of life by
maintaining health and wellness despite tough times.