Nursing Philosophy 1

Personal Nursing Philosophy

Wade Solloway

Delaware Technical Community College

NUR 300-501
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Throughout the duration of the Nursing 300 course, it was not evident to me that the

work we were completing would come together to form a final product. The past few weeks of

assignments were nothing more than a myriad of random papers that were individually revisiting

important topics surrounding nursing in my opinion. It is obvious to me now that the entire

purpose of said assignments was to help form a well-formulated personal nursing philosophy,

hence the name of the paper. That being said, my beliefs and values are simple. Nursing is the

practice of caring for individuals and oneself, while maintaining the integrity necessary for the

overall betterment of an individual’s health. I feel like that statement accurately summarizes most

of my beliefs and values as it pertains to nursing.

Caring for oneself is what comes first in my opinion. However, the statement “caring for

oneself” is very general and vague. A further analysis would show that the true meaning of self-

care involves aspects of lifelong learning, personal wellness, and conflict management.

Lifelong learning simply means what the name implies. Continuing to push the limits of

your knowledge so that everyday is a learning experience. My paper on lifelong learning

describes the importance of continuing education to me. I believe nurses in general are usually

individuals who have a hunger for knowledge and will usually push to become a person with

more responsibility as time goes on. In my example, I would like to continue school so that I

may become a nurse practitioner. My plan revolves around the concept of gaining hands on

experience at work while continuing my education in school so that I can compound my level of

knowledge over a set amount of time. As I have discussed before, I believe it is of the upmost

importance that all nurses continue learning and bettering themselves. In the healthcare industry,

a well-known idea is the never-ending changes in care technique and care process. One day’s
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best practice could change in an instant and become a thing of the past. The only way to keep up

with this ongoing change is to maintain a certain level of continuing education.

Personal wellness is not the same as self-care. Part of the reason my personal philosophy

statement works is because caring for oneself means so much more than just personal wellness.

Although personal wellness is a large part of self-care, it is just that, a part. Personal wellness is a

subset of self-care that many people immediately flock to. Regardless, my outlook on my own

personal wellness is that it is probably average for a nurse. For those who may not know,

personal wellness also has its own subsets which include physical, spiritual, social, emotional,

and intellectual. To properly formulate an understanding of one’s personal wellness, many people

will use models to represent overall wellness in each category. My wellness model would go on

to show that I excel in areas of physical and emotional wellness. I tend to lack in spiritual and

social wellness. It is important that nurses continue to monitor their own wellness so that they

may improve upon the lacking areas. And just like education, your wellness and the areas it

consists of tend to shift constantly. One week could be great for your physical wellness and the

next you might have excelled in social but lack in physical. It is important for us to keep in mind

that a lack in certain areas will happen, regardless of how hard you try to prevent it. Nurses

should allow themselves to ride the ups and downs without resistance, understanding that

everything works out.

It blows my mind that a simple statement about caring for oneself can be broken down

into so much. So far, a piece of my personal statement has gone on to explain the importance of

personal wellness, its subsets, and lifelong learning including the various ways of continuing

education. The best part, however, is there is still another aspect of self-care many do not think to

include.
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Conflict management is a tool that nurses will find to be a necessity in the workplace. We

are all intelligent individuals with varying personalities. When that many personalities combine

in a hospital, it could spell disaster and decrease the effectiveness of our overall care. This is why

I have included this in self-care, but why I also consider it a great point on its involvement in

care for other individuals. Caring for individuals is another part of my personal statement that I

find encompasses the many aspects of nursing. Conflict management describes ways in which

nurses and other healthcare professionals communicate effectively and efficiently. Ultimately, it

produces the best chance for good outcomes for our patients. On the side of self-care,

communication is 70% of nursing. Being able to converse with patients, physicians, family, and

other staff will reduce the stress a nurse is under. Nursing is already a stressful job. Having an

inability to mold to multiple types of personalities will only make it that much more difficult. I

would discover that my personality type is that of a logistician. In summary, I can be very direct,

determined, and tend to have little regard for those who I see as overly emotional when it comes

to work. In this example, it is important that I understand my weaknesses and work on them so

that I may produce beneficial outcomes regardless of a possible disagreement. Beneficial

outcomes mean effective and efficient care, overall giving us quality care of other individuals.

The other parts of my overall philosophy discuss care for others and integrity to continue

to do what is right. Although all the areas of nursing we have discussed in this class will play into

patient outcome and best practice, the areas of leadership, QSEN competences, and nursing

theory have slightly more of a focus on the patient in my opinion. Leadership involves a lot more

than just being a leader. It begins with understanding the four ethical principles laid out by the

American Nurses Association. The ethical principles are autonomy, benevolence,

nonmaleficence, and justice. They come together to lay out a guideline for all nurses to provide
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the best possible care for patients. This includes their safety, right to choose, equality, and

promise to do good. I believe that this then becomes the foundation to a good leader. The other

aspect of leadership is an understanding of the types of leadership and your own leadership style.

Like conflict management personality types, leaderships styles have strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding your weaknesses will only make you a better leader and allow you to do things to

make up for those weaknesses. For myself, I cannot truly say which style I most closely follow

because of the lack of time in leadership roles. Now that leadership is broken down into its

individual parts it is much easier to understand why I believe it is an important part of my patient

care section of my personal statement.

QSEN competencies is something you learn immediately in nursing school. It is easily

the basis of nursing practice in my opinion. What I mean is that, no matter what you’re talking

about that involves an aspect of nursing, QSEN tends to play a part in it. For instance, conflict

management would come back to competency of teamwork/collaboration. When talking about

the four ethical principles, QSEN competencies of patient-centered care and safety are evident.

To me, every single nurse to exist, regardless of where they received their education, base their

individual nursing philosophy on the understanding of QSEN competencies. My personal

philosophy for instance encompasses all the QSEN competencies without actually listing them

out. QSEN competencies has single-handedly helped to morph my way of thinking about nursing

practice since the day we first learned about it.

Nursing theory was something I saved for last because it to me it is like religions of

nursing. Every nurse who has learned about the many nursing theories and their creators, tends to

follow or align their beliefs with one of them. For me, Jean Watson’s theory of caring most

closely aligned with my philosophy of caring for the patient. These nursing theories are the
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backbone of how we care for our patients. All of the theories may have slight differences, but

overall, they go on to layout a way for the most quality care and the best chance for good

outcomes. Personally, it was nice to learn about Jean Watson and find out that someone from an

older generation of nurses thinks about patients the same way I do. I would argue that it is a very

beneficial tool for nurses to research nursing theories at some point to have something like a

“nursing religion” to grasp on to and strengthen one’s beliefs.

In conclusion, this course has done something for me that I did not know I needed. The

course has taken a lot of little sections of information that I know and allowed me to form a

personal philosophy that truly encompasses how I see the world of nursing. Without saying the

vast amount of information that is included within the personal philosophy, I can now effectively

shorten it to one statement that easily paints the picture in my head when someone talks about

nursing beliefs and values.

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References

Alarcon, E. (2020, January 17). The intersection and impact of personality type and conflict
management style. Mediate.com. https://www.mediate.com/the-intersection-and-impact-of-
personality-type-and-conflict-management-style/

Alice Petiprin. (2020, October 8). Nursing theory. Nursing Theory. https://nursing-theory.org/

Behrens, J. (2023, October 7). How to create a wellness plan . wikiHow.

https://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Wellness-Plan

Francis Payne Bolton School of Nursing. (2022). Competencies. QSEN Institute Competencies
https://www.qsen.org/competencies/pre-licensure-ksas

Hunt, D. (n.d.). Qsen competencies: A bridge to practice : Nursing made incredibly easy. LWW.
https://journals.lww.com/nursingmadeincrediblyeasy/fulltext/2012/09000/
qsen_competencies__a_bridge_to_practice.1.aspx

Sadler, F. (2023, July 13). 7 leadership styles in nursing - which is yours?. Relias.
https://www.relias.com/blog/7-leadership-styles-in-nursing

Wolters Kluwer. (2018, October 4). Best practices for ethical nursing leadership. Lippincott.
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/best-practices-for-ethical-nursing-
leadership