Nursing Philosophy

Professional nursing practice is based on nursing knowledge and theory in combination with knowledge from other disciplines. Critical thinking, clinical judgement and ethical decision making are valuable educational values that nurses should possess. Nursing practice requires implementation of the nursing process through maintaining, restoring and promoting health, which is the main goal of nursing. Therefore, nursing integrates multiple roles in order to provide high quality care, evidence-based practice and experience improved outcomes from the practice. The Western Governors University (WGU) nursing model identifies three main roles of nursing practice. They are; nurse as detective, nurse as scientist and nurse as manager of the healing environment (Western Governors University, 2020).

Part A: Nurse as Detective

The Bachelor of Nursing framework identifies the nurse as a detective. The nurse uses clinical imagination and nursing science to evaluate deviations to prevent adverse reactions (Western Governors University, 2020).This means that continuous monitoring and adapting to the nursing process, health policies and regulations, and health procedures that are essential in improving safety and control the adverse outcomes. Nurses have to make use of their knowledge as the basis to ensure the patients are safe from harm and participate in making a conducive healing environment (DeNisco, 2021). As a detective, the nurse must determine whether the changes proposed have risks to cause harm by using their clinical experience and nursing knowledge. In the context of this paper, Compassionate Patient-centered care and communication elements of the nurse will be discussed.

Compassionate Patient-Centered Care

Patient-centered care means providing care that is respectful and responsive to individual patient needs, values, preferences. All clinical decisions should be guided by patient values, beliefs and preferences. This points to the need for compassion in provision of nursing services. Compassion is the deep feeling of connectedness with the personal suffering of others. It evokes a moral response to the suffering resulting in care that can bring comfort to the patient. It also brings out the ability of a nurse to relate with other people when they are in vulnerable situations.

As a detective, a nurse must be keen to notice patients’ vulnerability, and experience an emotional reaction to act in a meaningful way that will help the patient. Patients have consistently identified compassion and other related values of respect, kindness or empathy as crucial during their encounter with healthcare workers. Clients experiencing mental disorders require emotional support to recover.

To any patient, care means more than the delivery of healthcare services. When the services are provided with a caring attitude, a powerful human interaction is yielded which tends to support healing. In the absence of compassion, patient-centered care practice is undermined. When nurses are conversing with their patients, making the patient feel comfortable and respected will present an opportunity to forge a productive relationship. Mental health care requires a lot of care if the patients are to recover. Majority of interventions offered to mental patients involve changing their way of thinking so as to change the behaviors. As a nurse, showing love, care, empathy and respect to the patient will help them in recovery. In dealing with mental health patients, one is able to develop compassion which is necessary for patients to open up, and talk freely about their condition.

Communication

Effective communication is one of the core elements of good nursing practices. Good communication between nurses and patients have significant impact on the outcome of nursing care of each patient. Effective communication skills include listening, excellent non-verbal communication and good personal relationship with patients (Western Governors University, 2020). Nurses must understand their patient and demonstrate courtesy, kindness and sincerity at all times.

Mental health requires good communication skills for professionals. Majority of these patients are undergoing trauma which causes their mental illness. By listening to the patients carefully, a nurse is able to pinpoint what is hurting the patient. Mental health patients require a lot of attention when it comes to communicating with them. Having a conversation and watching the patient behaviors is the only way to diagnose a patient. Thus, by applying the communication skills learnt in this course, a nurse will be able to detect any changes with the patient.

In practice, communication is important in understanding the patient condition as well as safety. In mental health, nurses are likely to encounter patients with severe mental disorders. The communication demand in this field is large. They are likely to experience diverse emotions from patients, families and colleagues. Creating an interpersonal relationship might be challenging without effective communication. Studies have shown that there exists a relationship between the way nurses communicate with their patients and the patient’s level of emotional response. Through dealing with the patients, a nurse is able to see the benefits

Part B:Nurse as Scientist

In clinical setting, nurses are not just caregivers or assistants. They also act as researchers, scientists and innovators in provision of healthcare. In such a capacity, they can actively research on the nature of illnesses, treatment options and the effect of medical innovations so that they can improve the wellbeing of their patients. Nurses are always in a better position to collect evidence, structure studies, hypothesize and theorize so that patients can have access to better care (Western Governors University, 2020).In applying the role of nurse as a scientist, models of evidence-based practice and safety and quality will be applied. Knowledge and experience in mental health nursing will be applied to help in understanding the role of a nurse as a scientist.

Evidence-Based Practice

Evidence-based practice is a widely recognized in improving health care quality in the field of mental health care. Nurses should be able to utilize best evidence as a basis of their nursing practice. Research studies have been conducted to effectively translate evidence into practice. To achieve significant outcomes, evidence from research must be accompanied by effective implementation. Evidence-based practice redefines care so that it becomes effective, safe and efficient.

Nurses play an important role in implementing evidence into practice. Evidence-based practice uses current knowledge to improve care processes and patient results (Chien, 2019). Its use increases the likelihood of increasing the intended health outcome. In mental health, evidence-based interventions are commonly used to treat clients. When patients report to the facility, it is the duty of the nurse to diagnose their symptoms and determine which disorder they are suffering from. Evidence-based practice makes it easier to relate past experiences to the patient condition. It also enables the nurse to identify the best intervention for the patient. Suppose a patient shows signs of hallucinations and is experiencing delusions. Using evidence-based practice, the nurse will diagnose the patient with schizophrenia and recommend an evidence-based intervention. Nurses will first form a clinical question to identify the patient problem according to the symptoms. The next step will involve gathering and analyzing the best evidence from research and past experiences to come up with the most effective course of action. The best evidence is applied to clinical practice and the results assessed. This research is mostly from past experiences, clinical opinions or evidence gathered from clinical trials or observational studies. Findings from research have shown that patient outcomes are improved when nurses practice in an evidence-based practice. It increases patient safety, clinical outcomes and decrease variations in patients’ outcomes. Thus, nurses must be on the lookout for the best practices for their patients.

Safety and Quality

The purpose of safety and quality care in nursing is to ensure that risks of harm to patient or caregivers is minimized. This is achieved by measuring quality in terms of cost, process, structure and outcomes. The safety of the patients and caregivers is important in any health care setup (D’Lima et al., 2017). In mental health, it is even more important due to the nature of mental incapacitation of the patients. This means that the nurse has to be extra careful to ensure the patients are safe at all time as well as ensure their personal safety. As scientists, nurses will always come up with ways to ensure the patients receive quality and safe care. Quality involves providing the right care, at the right time for the right patient and having the best outcome for your patients.

The safety of a patient is of utmost priority to any nurse. This does not involve physical safety, but also safe services. As a nurse, one must ensure the intervention provided to the patient is as safe as possible. Nurses are required to be creative to ensure that quality and safety is actively embedded in mental health provision. As scientists, nurses should be able to understand how to uphold and improve the quality and safety of care to the patients. This requires integrating scientific understanding with applied science for improvements and implementation of care. Stigma surrounding mental health patients may contribute to staff neglecting patient safety and quality of care provided. Thus, it is essential for nurses to have a better understanding of patient safety and quality of care and disseminate it appropriately in their work.

Part C:Nurse as Manager of the Healing Environment

Environment has the ability to create a positive attitude or induce negative feelings on patients and caregivers. The nurse has a responsibility as a manager to understand how different environments can influence patient and staff mental pressure (Western Governors University, 2020). Patient care unit should support staff and patients by providing a caring and safe healing environment. Nurses are responsible for creating, coordinating and advocating for a respectful, interdisciplinary environment that promotes the wellbeing and maintains the dignity of people. In acting as managers of the healing environment, the focus is on leadership and education, and teamwork and collaboration.

Leadership and Education

Leadership is the process of identifying and prioritizing in order to achieve optimal results from that work. Education on the other hand focuses on assessing the learning needs and facilitating the acquisition of knowledge and skills. As a manager of the healing environment, nurses must ensure that they apply leadership and education skills to engage others in creating and promoting the healing environment.

Practicing as a nurse prepares one to become a leader and educator. This involves merging the leadership and management knowledge with nursing roles. In presenting the patient’s situation to the relevant departments, the nurse develops in the role of a leader. Presenting evidence to other nurses and doctors to support the intervention proposed for the patients, one is able to develop in the role of an educator. Using evidence-based practice requires making people understand why one intervention is effective over the other.

Teamwork and Collaboration

Nurses work in an interdisciplinary field that involves various professionals. In today’s medical world, it is rare for patients to see just one medical expert. In most cases there are a few professionals to attend to the patient. They all work as a team to ensure optimal outcomes for the patient. Promoting teamwork and collaboration at the place of work is crucial to achieving the desired results. In mental care, there are medical doctors, therapists and counselors as well as other care givers to work with. The quality and safety of patients can only be achieved through inter-professional collaboration. As a nurse, it is important to ensure that there is teamwork and collaboration with all professionals in the healing environment in order to give patients the best possible care (Cherry & Jacob, 2019).In essence, nurses will act as bridge between the patients and other caregivers and professional. Effective teamwork and collaboration have immediate and positive impact on patient safety and recovery. It also reduces occurrence of adverse situations caused by communication and understanding errors between the professionals.

Conclusion

The role of nurses is well defined by being a detective, scientist and manager of the healing environment. The nursing course prepares one to take on many roles. Nurses are not only friends, advocates or counsellors to patients, but also conduct assessment and provide other services. They are also able to put themselves in leadership roles which gives them more understanding into the roles of a nurse. Nurses can advocate for patients and colleagues to enhance patient experience, reduce costs and improve quality and efficiency of care. This course prepares nurses to be better nurses to their patients by striving to improve on their nursing practice by getting the necessary medical and patient experience to improve professionally.

References

Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. (2019). Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, and management (8th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby Elsevier.

Chien, L. (2019). Evidence-Based Practice and Nursing Research. Journal Of Nursing Research, 27(4), e29. https://doi.org/10.1097/jnr.0000000000000346

DeNisco, S. M. (2021). Advanced practice nursing: Essential knowledge for the profession (4th            ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

D’Lima, D., Crawford, M., Darzi, A., & Archer, S. (2017). Patient safety and quality of care in         mental health: a world of its own?. Bjpsych Bulletin, 41(5), 241-243.             https://doi.org/10.1192/pb.bp.116.055327.

Furnes, M., Kvaal, K., &Høye, S. (2018). Communication in mental health nursing – Bachelor Students’ appraisal of a blended learning training programme – an exploratory study. BMC Nursing, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-018-0288-9

Western Governors University. (2020). Nursing programs conceptual model.             https://cm.wgu.edu/t5/Nursing-Student-Handbook/Nursing-Programs-Conceptual-    Model/ta-p/19