Personal Nursing Philosophy Paper

My Personal Nursing Philosophy

According to the American Nurses Association, nursing is defined as “protection, promotion, and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, communities, and populations” (American Nurses Association, 2004, p. 7). However there is much more to nursing, as a whole and throughout this paper I will be discussing my own personal nursing philosophy, which is what I believe to be the core characteristics of nursing. The aspects of my nursing philosophy and value/belief system are as follows: knowledge, time management, compassion/caring, advocacy, respect, honesty and patient
This was instilled in me from my family upbringing. In the nursing profession you need to have an overwhelming amount of compassion and caring for your patients and their families. You are not only caring for the patient’s physical health, but also their emotional needs. For example this semester in clinical we are on a palliative/oncology floor, which is quite different than the previous semesters of clinical where we have been doing more acute care. With palliative care or chronically ill patients, there are a lot of complicated emotional issues that need to be recognized and addressed by the health care professional. I found that these patients, once you build a rapport and trust, are the more humble and neat patients to work with. We spend a lot of our time just talking to them about life and their interests and although we are still taking care of their medical needs, we are supporting them emotionally more often than not. In order to do this kind of nursing you must have a lot of empathy and
At this point in time are country is experiencing a great nursing shortage which is only going to get worse in the future. As most people are aware, health care is expensive, insurance is expensive and often times not available to everyone. Also with our baby boomer generation getting older, the demand all of our knowledge, values and idealism into our job sites and apply them. If we are able to incorporate all the core characteristics of nursing, such as knowledge, time management, compassion/caring, advocacy, respect, honesty and patient privacfor health care is going to be greater. Another issue with the baby boomer generation is that many nurses at this time are approaching retirement and will again contribute to the decreased number of nurses in the health care