Patricia Zander: My Personal Philosophy Of Nursing

Personal philosophy differs for everyone, but generally guides a person in their professional practice in addition to their private lives. In my personal philosophy, I largely base my nursing pathways and private life on ethical values. Although I understand that there empirical beliefs that guide many nurses, and I am still a fresher nurse without years upon years of experience, I still hold ethics at the core.
Patricia Zander addressed that there are different ways of knowing for nurses (2000). Zander incorporates Barbara Carper’s aspects that include empirics, ethics, esthetics, and personal care (2000). These attributes are making up what a nurse is and how a nurse takes these and transforms them into holistic patient care and teachings.

Florence Nightingale was the first nurse to propose theories that would create an influential impact on nurses for years to come. Nightingale focused on the well being of her patients and what could be changed to improve their health (Johnson & Webber, 2015). This led to other nurses creating theories of their own to guide practice.
Patricia Benner’s theory of Novice to Expert is a theorist that every new graduate can relate to. There are five stages that Benner addresses that each new nurse will go experience as they grow and learn: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert level (Johnson & Webber, 2015). This theory directly relates to how a nurse grows and learns throughout the course of a career, beginning at the most basic level and becoming an expert. At the expert level a nurse may be a resource to all the novice nurses just starting out, continuing the stages in which Benner describes.
An important concept to focus on is continuing education. Health care changes all the time. With new technology, new evidence based practice, and new tools, procedures and medications being introduced at increasing and steady rate. This change to health care presents an important task to nursing as well as other health care professionals that directly relates to patient care and

While the interprofessional study indicated that there are difficulties in overcoming collaborative potential, it was worth the education and group efforts for a holistic patient care effort. In the second study, with the nurses’ attitudes measured in regards to continued education, it was noted that there were not significant differences in responses to education and nurse attitudes. All the while the importance of continued education can impact patient care and the outcomes.
Empirical knowledge, ethical reasoning and continued education are all important to patient care. These concepts together help shape and guide nurses in practice, both professionally and in personal life too. Empirical knowledge assists a nurse in beginning Patricia Benner’s stages of nursing, starting with Novice and ending at Expert. These stages are ones that every nurse encounters while developing professionally until they reach the Expert stage.
Ethical reasoning is more of an innate moral compass that helps guide a nurse in times of ethical dilemmas. While the empirical knowledge can help support the education provided, the ethical reasoning determines how a nurse will react to a situation and assists a patient or themselves into what they believe is right while upholding the standards of empirical