Philosophy of Nursing
Providing good nursing care starts with having a caring attitude. If you care about the patients you serve then you will have the drive to provide good care. Part of providing quality care starts with caring for yourself, being educated, and having a mindset towards providing holistic care.
In my opinion caring for yourself is a key aspect of caring for your patients. If you are over stressed, over worked, and under rested, providing good care is next to impossible. Along with being over worked and over stressed comes coping mechanisms, which can be either good, or in many cases bad. Managing these stressors is a big part of preparing yourself to care for others, and one part that I feel is over looked many times. So in-order to properly care for others you need to care enough to care for yourself first. Examples of bad coping mechanisms include things like stress eating, alcohol, and tobacco use. Examples of positive coping mechanisms are things like working out, riding bikes, and making time to do something enjoyable. It’s important as healthcare workers to maintain our health by eating right, exercising regularly, getting enough rest, and maintaining our spiritual/mental well being.
Education is a big part of my personal philosophy of nursing. Everyone has gone through extensive education to become a nurse but that is only the beginning of the educational process. It is our responsibility to continually update our personal knowledge as things change so we stay up to date on the latest evidence based practice. Educational requirements even change as we change specialties and requires continual adaptation on the nurse’s part to stay up to date on best practice in each area.
The third main area in my philosophy is providing complete nursing care. Each patient is unique and requires something different to properly care for the whole person, finding ways to properly do this is key, but at times very challenging. In the operating room it is evident which nurses care for the complete patient and which nurses do not. Some nurse are completely lacking in the care of the patients mind or mental experience, their focus is the physical care and patient safety, which is good but the mental side should not be excluded. One of the nurses I work with provides excellent care to the whole person. In a recent experience this nurse took the time to demonstrate what was going to happen on the patients stuffed animal first, so the child would know what to expect, which made things much better and allowed the child to feel safe and at ease. Many nurses would simply bulldoze right through that and just get the patient off to sleep as fast as possible in an attempt to avoid the human connection experience.
Overall my opinion about my nursing philosophy boils down to a caring attitude. When you care about something is makes you work harder to perform at the highest level possible. Part of delivering the best possible care is taking great care of yourself first, continually educating yourself, and continually seeking ways to meet the needs of the patient as a whole rather than one physiological problem.
In my opinion caring for yourself is a key aspect of caring for your patients. If you are over stressed, over worked, and under rested, providing good care is next to impossible. Along with being over worked and over stressed comes coping mechanisms, which can be either good, or in many cases bad. Managing these stressors is a big part of preparing yourself to care for others, and one part that I feel is over looked many times. So in-order to properly care for others you need to care enough to care for yourself first. Examples of bad coping mechanisms include things like stress eating, alcohol, and tobacco use. Examples of positive coping mechanisms are things like working out, riding bikes, and making time to do something enjoyable. It’s important as healthcare workers to maintain our health by eating right, exercising regularly, getting enough rest, and maintaining our spiritual/mental well being.
Education is a big part of my personal philosophy of nursing. Everyone has gone through extensive education to become a nurse but that is only the beginning of the educational process. It is our responsibility to continually update our personal knowledge as things change so we stay up to date on the latest evidence based practice. Educational requirements even change as we change specialties and requires continual adaptation on the nurse’s part to stay up to date on best practice in each area.
The third main area in my philosophy is providing complete nursing care. Each patient is unique and requires something different to properly care for the whole person, finding ways to properly do this is key, but at times very challenging. In the operating room it is evident which nurses care for the complete patient and which nurses do not. Some nurse are completely lacking in the care of the patients mind or mental experience, their focus is the physical care and patient safety, which is good but the mental side should not be excluded. One of the nurses I work with provides excellent care to the whole person. In a recent experience this nurse took the time to demonstrate what was going to happen on the patients stuffed animal first, so the child would know what to expect, which made things much better and allowed the child to feel safe and at ease. Many nurses would simply bulldoze right through that and just get the patient off to sleep as fast as possible in an attempt to avoid the human connection experience.
Overall my opinion about my nursing philosophy boils down to a caring attitude. When you care about something is makes you work harder to perform at the highest level possible. Part of delivering the best possible care is taking great care of yourself first, continually educating yourself, and continually seeking ways to meet the needs of the patient as a whole rather than one physiological problem.