Advanced Practice Leadership Theory

Running Head: ADVANCED PRACTICE LEADERSHIP 1
Advanced Practice Leadership 4

Advanced Practice Leadership: An Ethic of Care
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Advanced Practice Leadership: An Ethic of Care
The Advanced Nursing Practice Leadership Dynamic Perhaps more so than any other profession, nursing has been described as a caring profession and defined by an ethos of care. When asked why they entered the profession, many nurses will respond that they simply love caring for people. However, nursing has also struggled for legitimacy and respect over the years and sometimes resisted being solely defined as a caring vocation. Particularly, nursing leaders have struggled to merge caring and evidence-based practice as they

In Jean Watson?s theory, ?caring requires the nurse to have a deep connection to the spirit within the self and to the spirit within the patient? (Lachman, 2012, p. 112), but, on a practical basis, cultivating such a close relationship with a patient may prove to be challenging. The emphasis on a transpersonal caring experience that transcends the self may be difficult to insert in a practical fashion into a busy nurse?s daily tasks when nurses are understaffed and have little time. However, many nurses resist the notion that care should be the primary ethical defining value of nursing, given that this female-dominated profession has often been denigrated as merely giving care, versus using evidence-based medicine (Woods, 2011). But defenders of an ethic of care in leadership stress the need for caring versus curing as an antidote to medicine which is purely ends-focused. ?Caring defines nursing, as curing often defines medicine? (Lachman, 2012, p. 113). The nurse?s role is to support the needs of the patient in conjunction with the patient?s social, psychological, and physical framework rather than simply focus on curing illness. Care is not simply sentimentality but rather reflects the need to make nursing a practical discipline on an individual basis for each and every patient in a unique fashion (Woods

But a care-based ethos does not mean discounting good practices regarding patient health. Even if nursing is a carative rather than a purely curative perspective that works with the needs of the patient, it is still fundamentally grounded in evidence-based medicine.

References
Botes, A. (2000). A comparison between the ethics of justice and the ethics of care. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 32(5):1071-5.
Lachman, V. (2012). Applying the ethics of care to your nursing practice. Med/Surg Nursing.
21 (2): 112-115. Retrieved from: http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/EthicsStandards/Resources/Applying-the-Ethics-of-Care-to-Your-Nursing-Practice.pdf
Pavlish, C., Brown-Saltzman, K., Hersh, M., Shirk, M., Rounkle, A. (2011). Nursing priorities, actions, and regrets for ethical situations in clinical practice. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 43 (40): 385-395.
Vanlaere, L & Gastmans, C. (2011). A personalist approach to care ethics. Nursing Ethics,
18 (2): 161-173.
Woods, M. (2011). An ethic of care in nursing: Past, present and future considerations. Ethics & Social Welfare, 5(3), 266-276.