Personal Philosophy Of Nursing Essay

Personal Philosophy of Nursing

Shayna Brewer

Northern Arizona University

NUR 330 Lesson 1 Essay

Dr. Mary Walton

Personalized Learning RN to BSN

April 28, 2023

Personal Philosophy of Nursing

The choice I made to go into the nursing field was originally a decision of convenience for me. Out of high school, my parents encouraged me to go into a field that offered flexibility, stability, and would not require immense amounts of schooling or debt to achieve. My knowledge about healthcare was abysmal, aside from going to the doctor’s office as a child and an ambulance ride with my mom once as a 12-year-old, and my understanding of nursing as a field was even more so lacking. As I grew closer to becoming a nurse, I fell more and more

I thought, “You just use the medical knowledge, you care about people, and that makes you a nurse”. When I learned more about the philosophy of nursing, I was proven wrong. The writings of nursing theorists are enmeshed in more than simply the fundamentals of nursing in the past, and they dictate far more regarding our daily practice and the acquisition of nursing knowledge than we realize. “Furthering nursing knowledge requires methods that can illuminate the central phenomenon of the discipline” (Boykin & Schoenhofer,

The theories of nursing describe the interconnection between the four metaparadigms, regardless of how they specifically define each one, the person is the patient, who experiences a change in health status, sometimes because of the environment, and nursing can effect change on the environment to promote the health of the person. It is quite easy to infer the nursing theorist I most closely align my practice with is Nightingale. Her holistic patient care, health promotion, and preventive practices are concepts I hold to strong importance, and as I progress and learn in my practice, I hope to emphasize them to my patients. The future I hope for nursing is one that continues to focus on patient safety and outcomes by encouraging safer staffing and protects the nurse/patient relationship as once centered around advocacy and trust. I see my future self enmeshed in patient care and education, ideally in wound care or orthopedics. In looking more closely at nursing theory and examining my own personal philosophy, it helps recenter my focus as a nurse who cares for my patients and loves the field I have chosen to spend my career