Personal Reflection on The Metaparadigms of Nursing Profession (Essay Sample)

Personal Mantra for the Nursing Profession
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Background Information
The rapid growth and development that prevails across professions triggers the dire need to develop self-understanding and to conceptualize what it takes to be an effective practitioner in the relevant niche. I am a sum-total of what my social and professional environments have bestowed upon me. My discernment to identify with medical profession was a conception triggered by the desire to touch an ailing soul and be counted on when it counts. For quite some time now, my professional life has been met with nearly equal measure of joy and despair. Whereas waking up in full spirits and desire to positively influence the lives of my patients, ensuring the ambience of healing environment to them has always put smiles on my face, I have more often than not, found myself devastated when occasionally, I have had to witness the patient throw away the towel, not because their time has come, but because of lack of some basic requirements at the facility.
Having been a practitioner for some time now, I have come to lean a lot that goes round the four basic metaparadigms of healthcare. I have come to believe that the profession goes far beyond the theoretical definition of nursing as well as the confines of job description and remuneration terms. I could simply put it that nursing is a noble profession that seeks the prevalence of mutual understanding and a complete package of understanding. Occasionally, I have had to come to terms with my intuition, putting myself in the patients’ shoes in order to identify how best to serve them. For sure, the healing process of any particular patient goes a notch higher that mere administration of treatment and making a follow-up of the curing process. To nurse is to show some care.
In pursuit for the achievement of my professional goals as a nurse practitioner, I have since come to develop some personal mantra that serve to keep me aligned to my professionalism; outlining my outset objectives and my commitment to achieving them. My core values and beliefs, therefore, go down the records as honesty, accountability, persistence, kindness, value for family, lifelong learning, and success in achieving my set goals. The aforementioned are my guiding principles in living my life daily and making personal discernments. For sure, the core of nursing entails knowledge, caring and integrity.
Metaparadigms of Nursing Profession
Caring, communication, compassion, commitment, courage and competence are the utmost defining traits of effective nursing profession. Nursing, as any other profession, has its minimum called for traits and the aforementioned 6C’s are not subject to bargain. Moreover, developing a clear understanding of the expected values of a nurse such as: Human dignity, autonomy in decision making, privacy, commitment, human relationship, precision and accuracy, honesty, sympathy, and individual and professional competency, give room for correct articulation of the four metaparadigms of healthcare. Branch, Deak, Hiner, and Holzwart (2016) argue that the advancement in the modern day medicine has created fear in some practitioners that the healthcare approach is becoming more methodical and less altruistic, prompting the need to understand Jean Watson’s theory of human care, which views caring to be a separate entity from curing. This is, in essence, pegged on the four metaparadigms of the person, environment, health and nursing.
According to TCNJ (2017), human beings are energy fields and as such, are greater than the sum of their parts, hence, cannot be predicted merely by the knowledge of their parts. Being a holistic being, a human person is both dynamic and multidimensional. He is unique, sentient, creative and able to reason. Branch et al. (2016) delineate a person as the patient who receives the care in different aspects such as spirituality, family, friends, culture and socio-economic status. In my understanding, I deem it that a human person is valuable and should, therefore, be natured, respected and understood as they have the right to make informed decisions regarding their health. Watson further asserts that for a complete healing of the patient, a holistic approach focusing on the body, mind and soul is inevitable and that omission of any of the three will derail the achievement of complete healing (Branch et al., 2016).
Environment entails both the internal and external factors that relate to the patience and the interaction the patient has with his visitors and the surrounding (Branch et al., 2016). In my perception, an environment entails the geography and the landscape of the human social experience. This includes, but not limited to global, national, personal and social factors. It also goes far and wide to relate the customs, expectation, values and beliefs that may directly affect the patient’s life. TCNJ (2017) further relates environment to the nature of a nursing client who encounters caring relationships, aesthetic beauty, threats to wellness, and lived experiences of life. To this extent, it would be more honorable to consider the kind of environment that could render healing possible to the patient. By so subjecting the patient to a hostile environment, the healing process may take longer and may occasionally grow futile.
The third and equally important concept in the nursing metaparadigms is health. In my perception, I have always deemed health to be both rational and contextual. It gives focus to the entire social, physical, moral and aesthetic realms of the patient. Simply put, health is the common platform that brings the nurse and the person together, characterized by a particular environment. It all scales down to the patient’s wellness. TCNJ (2017) views as lived experience of congruence between a person’s possibilities and realities based on caring and feeling cared for. Loc. Cit, TCNJ agitates that it is the interaction process between the environment and the people within it that dictates the degree of achievable health (2017).
Nursing closes up the list of the basic concepts of the nursing profession. Cody (2006) asserts that for human health to be conceptualized in a norm-based framework in the nursing science, then purpose and consequences of the same must be demonstrated to the person whose health is judged to be outside the norm. In close relation to this statement, Parse (1992, as cited in Cody, 2006) lauds that a nurse is guided by a nursing theory that completely points a value for human, to practice in a wholly respectful way that pre-colludes labeling and trying to change the patient. In my perception, nursing is, and continues to be a holistic healthcare, guided by virtues such as responsibility and human freedom. For professional nursing practice to be realized, clinical judgment skills are not only essential but also inevitable. As a practitioner, I have always strived to make use of critical thinking and clinical judgment in order to provide evidence-based care to individuals and families. Nursing, therefore, refers to the nurse practitioners and how they apply their knowledge and skills when caring for the patient.
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