A Nurse is defined as a “person trained to care for the sick or infirm, especially in a hospital” (The free dictionary, 2002) while caring is defined as “a feeling and exhibiting concern and empathy for others; showing or having compassion” (The free dictionary, 2002). The two are very intertwined with each other. To be a nurse you must show both aspects. An ideal nurse to me is someone that goes out of their way to help others, someone that is an overall caring person that is professional, passionate and is wanting to make a difference in the community while applying their knowledge.
Nursing is more than just taking care of client while their ill, nursing is creating relationships, show characteristics of the CNO standards while also implanting nurses caring theories. By having all these aspect you then are the best nurse you possibly can be. To build a nurse-client relationship a nurse must establish a therapeutic relationship that entitles trust, respect, professional intimacy, empathy and power. While showing these components a nurse must show compassion to create a trusting-caring relationship. By doing so it’s directed at advancing the best interest and outcome of the client.
This ensures the client needs are first and foremost. “… Nurse’s use of professional nursing knowledge, skills and caring attitudes and behaviours to provide nursing services that contribute to the clients health and well-being” (CNO, 2002 p. 17). Caring can be expressed in many ways from a nurse’s behaviour, their action and the attributes of a nurse. Caring nurse’s listen and are empathetic with clients’ views. Nurses must recognize clients as unique individuals and follow the patients’ goals when planning and providing care.
Compassion is respecting and supporting decisions the client makes. Nurses interact with different cultures every day. Nurses need to have sensitive biases of each client culture. By enhancing their knowledge of various cultures and skills it shows values of caring, empathy, trustfulness, promoting health and autonomy and respecting client choices. A nurse needs to create a therapeutic relationship, promoting a philosophy of clientcentred care. Philosophies that are put into nursing practices are Jean Watson Theory and Florence Nightingale Theory.
Jean Watson believed in three major elements of her theory carative factors, the transpersonal caring relationship, and the caring occasion/caring moment. Examples of carative factors was “honor the human dimensions of nursing’s work and the inner life world and subjective experiences of the people we serve” ( Watson, 1997, p. 50) and “developing and sustaining a helping-trusting, authentic caring relationship” and “being present to, and supportive of, the expression of positive and egative feelings as a connection with deeper spirit of self and the one-being cared-for” (Watson, 2001, p. 47).
To build a relationship with a client, a nurse must be self-aware and not judgemental towards clients. Nurse need to have a deep connection to the spirt within themselves and within the client to be able to express compassion. Nurses must look at the uniqueness of a client and preserve dignity while caring for the patient. While doing this a nurse must also give space and time to develop a manner of caring in the nurse- client relationship. Nightingale expresses the nature of belief “As you will find God within you”.
Florence possessed moral authority, it was grounded in caring and was in a large mission that came from her spirituality (Art of Nursing, 2015). Nightingale believed in a healthy surrounding and the environment nurses put their patients in, mentally. An overall mental well-being improves the physical well-being. In the paper Utilizing a Caring-based Nursing Model in an Interdepartmental Setting to Improve Patient Satisfaction studied by a team at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Florida Atlantic University studies on how to determine if implementing an interdepartmental caring-based approach based on Jean Watson’s theory of human caring could have a positive effect on patient satisfaction (Dudkiewicz,,2014).
I chose this article because she expressed the importance of a caring environment to keep patients overall satisfied with their hospital experience. While providing this theory Dudkiewicz encountered the overwhelming demand on healthcare workers leading to stress, which had a major impact on the a person’s behaviour. Due to this negative behaviour it resulted to decreasing client- nurse relationships.
To prove her theory Dudkiewicz compared Jean Watson theory of caring to express the importance of caring to an individual; therefore showing that caring conveys a positive levels of satisfaction. It was determined that satisfaction levels did improve significantly following a caring-based intervention (Dudkiewicz, 2014, Bell, 2015). Jim’s story talks about how he was diagnosed with Lymphoma. Lymphoma is a form of cancer that impacts the immune system and the lymphocytes in a person’s body, this is very critical. Jim went to the hospital many times, seeing many nurses.
While he was being treated, he expresses how he felt “smaller and smaller as a person” due to the way to nurse’s and health team cared for him. As a nurse | would treat Jim as a person and not a disease being professional and personal at the same time. People want to be treated as a person and not an object. A thumbprint I would leave on Jim is just being as caring as I can, a simple touch can go a long way and improve a person’s mood. If I was caring for Jim or any patients at the hospital I would want them to know that I am there for anything they need, even if they just need someone to talk to.
When patients express their feelings, it could be due to being in a state of helplessness, just by listen to them can go a long way. A moment that made me laugh was when the nurse took her shoes off and talked to Jim while he was at the hospital. It reminded me of something I would do. There has been many times when volunteering at the hospital I sat with patients and they told me about their life. Sometimes patients want to talk about their life and remember the good times in their life before they came to the hospital. Jim story affected me because I want to be that nurse that makes an impact on a person life.
You can care for a person, but you truly need to care for the patients because that’s what nursing is all about. Nursing is more than just basic care, it caring for the person mentally as well as physically. Caring is a major part of nursing, it should be implemented into every day care. CNO Standards, Jean Watson Theory and Florence Nightingale express what| believe nursing is all about. Nursing to me, is caring for someone and showing compassion. As a nurse you must truly care for the patients, to take care of them. Without caring then the hospital would be