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Running head: PHILOSOPHY OF NURSING

Philosophy of Nursing

Noelle Hinson

Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing

Dr. Marcella Williams, DNP, RN, CNE, CMSRN

NUR 4140

October 30, 2020

“I pledge.”
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Philosophy of Nursing

I have been asked to define nursing many times during my time as a nursing

student but for the purposes of this paper I really took the time to think about what

exactly nursing means to me. The American Association of Nursing defines nursing as

“the glue that holds a patient’s health care journey together. Across the entire patient

experience, and wherever there is someone in need of care, nurses work tirelessly to

identify and protect the needs of the individual” (ANA, 2020). This really resonated with

me as I believe nurses serve as advocates for their patients and at the center of nursing

lies compassionate and empathetic human beings. Furthermore, the nursing profession

would not be where it is today without nursing education. Nursing is a collaborative

effort that is constantly evolving, and innovation requires education in these ever-

changing times. Nurses are lifelong learners which only adds to the multidimensional

profession. That is one beauty of this field. At its core, nursing is the caring and

promotion of health for our community. We do this through service to our patients.

Personally, I define nursing as advocating for those in their most vulnerable times and

providing compassionate care without hesitation or bias.

As my time as a nursing student comes to a close, I have reflected on my

personal philosophy and how I will take that into my career as a Registered Nurse. We

were required to write about our personal philosophy of nursing early in our schooling

and I have taken some time to reflect on what I wrote two and a half years ago. I stated

that my personal philosophy was holistic care. While I still believe this to be applicable,

my time in the clinical settings have only added to my values and beliefs that make up

my personal philosophy. I have learned how important the upholding of human dignity
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is. Every patient, no matter the circumstances, deserves exceptional care from me and I

will try everyday as a nurse to uphold that value. Being immersed in the hospitals has

allowed myself to work on those nurse and patient relationships and build upon my

personal philosophy. My personal philosophy is reflected in my nursing practice by

understanding all aspects of my patient. To provide the best care—holistic care—I owe

it to my patient to learn about them aside from their ailments. This is what, I believe,

upholds human dignity. My patients are worthy of respect simply because they human

beings and through holistic care I will support them in every way possible. As a nurse, I

have an ethical responsibility to provide holistic care to promote human dignity.

While my values and beliefs have not technically changed, I believed that have

only evolved and I have grown on them as a nursing student. I know I will take them

with me as I begin the journey as newly Registered Nurse. Two and a half years ago I

described my values as compassion, caring, and quality care. To this day, I believe that

these are still the core of my being and what drives my everyday existence. They are

also the foundation for my calling to the profession. Through my time as a nursing

student I have built upon and reflected on these values. I have truly learned that

compassion is deserved by everyone—whether it be my colleague or my patient. I have

learned to care for those at their most vulnerable and worst days and have grown in

understanding my patients as a whole. Finally, I have given quality care in the clinical

and non-clinical settings. Throughout nursing school, I have touched the surface of

quality care and I know that it’s a value I will only grow upon in my nursing career. I then

touched on my beliefs. I stated that my beliefs were advocating for my patients is the

best form of justice, that each patient deserves the same level of care despite their
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gender, race, or socioeconomic status, and nursing is a holistic service. I still hold these

beliefs to be true and the driving force behind my calling. I believe that each of these

contribute to my personal philosophy of providing holistic care and how that promotes

human dignity.

Furthermore, I will now discuss a patient interaction I have had that demonstrates

application of the Bon Secours Professional Practice model in my nursing practice. The

Bon Secours faculty believe that nursing is an art and a science that encompasses the

following: holistic care, a collaborative healthcare team, and education as a

collaborative effort. In my immersion experience I believe I have seen and given holistic

care. I am in the core nursery at St. Francis Medical Center and take care of the

newborns for some time after birth before we send them up to our Mother Infant unit.

We had a patient not long ago who was giving her baby up for adoption. She did not

want to see or hold the baby following the birth so the baby came to the nursery until a

foster family could be arranged. While in the beginning it was hard to understand the

reasoning behind this mother’s decision, we soon learned how she came to that

conclusion. We took the time to get to know her and ask her questions. Without

revealing too much, she stated that her family would disown her if they knew she had a

baby without being married. This is a prime example of how every patient we come

across is diverse and worthy of dignity and respect. Many of us did not agree with her

decision but after listening to her story, we realized this is a unique and complex

individual who still deserves the same level of care as our other patients.

In our Nursing Synthesis class, we have worked all semester on a quality

improvement project. My group and I have worked diligently to improve and come up
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with a solution to the sepsis care at St. Mary’s Hospital. This hospital was falling slightly

short on appropriate sepsis care given to patients and our proposed solution consisted

of a timer to alert the whole healthcare team of timing in the sepsis bundle. Working as

a team, we will present this project to hospital staff. Throughout this semester, I have

learned how important it is to be a change agent. This class has truly emphasized how

crucial it is to be a lifelong learner and how that impacts the nursing profession. To me,

being a lifelong learner is being a change agent. As nurses, we know that healthcare is

constantly evolving. Being involved in those innovative enhancements allows us to grow

as nurses and provide the best quality care that we can.

Next, I have been asked to describe Patricia Benner’s theory: From Novice to

Expert as it applies to the nursing profession and where I currently stand on the scale.

This theory incorporates five stages: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient,

and expert. I will briefly describe each stage.

Benner (2001) describes the novice stage as “have had no experience of the

situations in which they are expected to perform” (p. 20). Novice beginners are taught

about situations in terms of objective attributes such as weight, intake and output,

temperature, etc. Learning and building upon these skills requires no external

knowledge on the situations. Benner also states that novice beginners are to be given

rules to guide their performance because they have no experience in the task at hand.

Nursing students in a new clinical area are considered novice. The next stage is

advanced beginner. Advanced beginners are described as “ones who can demonstrate

marginally acceptable performance, ones who have coped with enough real situations

to note (or to have pointed out to them by a mentor) the recurring meaningful situational
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components that are termed ‘aspects of the situation’ in the Dreyfus model” (Benner,

2001, p. 22). The advanced beginner is still following those set of rules set forth in the

novice stage, however, they are able to “formulate principles that dictate actions in

terms of both attributes and aspects” (Benner, 2001, p.23). In the advanced beginner

stage, everything they are learning is still so new to them, they follow instructions strictly

and do not stray. The third stage is competent. Competence is described as “a nurse

who has been on the job in the same or similar situations two to three years, develops

when the nurse begins to see his or her actions in terms of long-range goals or plans of

which he or her is consciously aware” (Benner, 2001, p. 25-26). A competent nurse

takes the problem at hand and formulates a plan based on conscious, abstract and

analytical thinking. The two to three years of experience drives the decisions of this

nurse. The fourth stage in this theory is proficient. Benner (2001) depicts the proficient

nurse as someone who “understands a situation as a whole because they perceive its

meaning in terms of long-term goals” (p. 27). The difference in this stage is the

proficient nurse will understand what to expect in a situation based on experience and

know to respond to changes in the situation. Lastly, the final stage in this theory is

expert. Benner (2001) states that “the expert performer no longer relies on an analytic

principle (rule, guideline, maxim) to connect her or his understanding of the situation to

an appropriate action. The expert nurse, with an enormous background of experience,

now has in intuitive grasp of each situation and zeros in on the accurate region of the

problem without wasteful consideration of a large range of unfruitful, alternative

diagnoses and solutions” (p. 31-32). As I begin my new career as a Registered Nurse, I

would place myself at Stage 2: Advanced Beginner. I have been exposed with enough
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real situations to recognize meaningful components of the situation at hand. With that

being said, I still stick with the rules and guidelines provided my instructors and mentors

and follow them strictly.

Moving up from novice to expert is the goal throughout my career as a nurse.

Being a lifelong learner will help me reach each new stage of this model. Next in my

journey will to become competent in my practice. The goal here is to have a “feeling of

mastery and the ability to cope with and manage the many contingencies of clinical

nursing” (Benner, 2001, p. 27). This comes with experience and the conscious effort to

keep learning from each new situation I encounter. As I progress through each new

stage, self-care and long-term professional development is extremely important. I don’t

think I would be able to perform this job without the two. Self-care is what is going to get

me through the day to day. In this field, we can see some difficult situations and learning

how to cope and promote our own self-care will help us rationalize those experiences. I

plan to make time to do the things that I love to do outside of nursing. My new nurse

manager told me during my interview how important it is to separate personal and

professional life. I plan to take that and make sure when I’m not at work I am taking the

time to promote my own happiness with things I like to do. And lastly, long-term

professional development goes hand in hand when moving from novice to expert.

Building on professional development helps one to reach new milestones in their career.

For me, I plan to continue to get certifications such as Certified Neonatal Nurse and

eventually go back to school to becomes a Nurse Practitioner.

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Reference

Benner, P. (2001). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice.

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

What is Nursing & What do nurses do?: ANA Enterprise. (2020). Retrieved October 30, 2020,

from https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/workforce/what-is-nursing