Four Nursing Metaparadigms

In order for one to construct a personal philosophy, they must consider the four nursing metaparadigms: person, nursing, environment, and health. Depending on what concepts and processes they are influenced by, the focus concept of person will be affected differently. I will be focusing on the influence of ethics and communication on my personal philosophy.

Personal Philosophy

Closely following the idea of patient-care theory, my philosophy is based around the individual patients wants and needs and adapting their care plan to fit their own goals, while still maintaining maximum health as much as possible. For the phenomena of the metaparadigm, they are technically defined as the person being the recipient of care, nursing being the actions

97). When one takes in these various principles while planning care, they are individualizing each plan to be sensitive to their patients’ values and rights. For example, if a nurse is practicing autonomy and beneficence they are respecting their patients right to make decisions for themselves while also trying to adjust care to get optimal benefits. In relation to my philosophy, ethics serves as a primary guideline to the nursing process with special emphasis on autonomy and nonmaleficence. Regarding autonomy, most of the time the patient knows what is best for their quality of life, especially during end of life care. Pain and suffering are both subjective qualities and can only be accurately defined by the patient themselves, usually either verbally or through facial expressions, so listening to what they are experiencing is essential to making a plan of care to help increase their health status. That being considered, nonmaleficence comes into play when a patient is obviously or dangerously overstepping the boundaries of safe practice, such as overmedicating or any self-harming behavior, because these behaviors may be hindering the process of reaching a healthy state. In this case, it is the nurse’s job to step in and make suggestions to more safely return them to state of

448). Communication may be auditory, visual, or kinesthetic and on a intrapersonal, interpersonal, or group level. There are many factors that can be barriers of communication such as cultural or developmental factors, but some methods to increase the effectiveness of communication could be using warmth and empathy to connect with your patient or not using clichés or judgmental comments to create a