Concept of care and the nursing metaparadigm

This is what makes the nursing discipline a profession.

Abstract Much emphasis has been placed on the importance of the environment as a determinant of health; however, little theoretical work in nursing has specifically articulated the importance of the nursing practice environment as a factor in patient outcomes.

This work advances the unitary-transformative-caring paradigm by focusing on the concept of integrality and exploring the nursing meta-paradigm concepts nursing, environment, human being, and health through integral philosophical inquiry.

Over the past few decades, the importance of the nursing practice environment has been explored through various research methods but is largely in the domain of health services researchers, who are exploring ways to reduce turnover and burnout among nurses and improve health outcomes for patients.

The unique contribution of nursing science to advancing health research and changing norms of health care is stymied by the unfamiliarity or discomfort that many nurses associate with nursing theory, and the general tendency to ground nursing research in biomedical, sociological, or psychological frameworks.

Integrality reflects the oneness and unity or wholeness of humans and their environment. In nursing practice, integrality involves the realization that the observer is integral to what he or she is observing. The focus is on collaboration including our patientscoevolution of knowledge and patterns of health, and unitary thinking that does not reject objective analysis but recognizes its limits.

How this way of being or care is expressed and perceived or received is a reflection of the interior and exterior environments of both the nurse and the patient, which will be discussed later in this article. The ideas presented here represent the culmination of 8 years of inquiry regarding the central question: What is the essence and experience of nursing?

While this work is grounded in contemporary integral philosophy, the findings are consistent with the Unitary Transformative Caring paradigm and articulate a clear foundation of the core elements of nursing that can be used to ground nursing education, research, and practice. In addition, there can be a tendency to force data or knowledge to fit into the framework of the integral model.

It suggests not so much what is true about the world but how people can work together to discover what is most true, just, and useful in a particular context ie, it includes an epistemology as well as an ontology.

What I aim to present here is an updated synthesis of the very basic definitions and relationship between the central concepts of nursing that should resonate with all nurses.

Since these ideas were first shared in print, the quadratic figures have been redrawn, now bounded by a circle symbolizing wholeness and unity. Integral theory, like unitary science, maintains that the basic unit of analysis is not the atom, or the molecule, or the mathematical unit, or the interpretive perspective, or the cognitive pattern, or the historical event, or the spiritual revelation.

This is especially true in health care situations where there is a cross-cultural clash between health beliefs. Nursing impacts the health of individuals, families, groups, and populations through situated caring or the lack of.

Because of the integral unitary nature of human beings, physical, mental, or spiritual aspects of health may be impacted by care or lack of care in any dimension of their experience. For example, physical health symptoms may be impacted by psychological, spiritual, environmental, social, and cultural conditions or events.

An integral view of nursing contextualizes the multiple pathways through which nurses receive their education or training.

This conceptual model of nursing situates the different levels of nursing and types of nursing within the context of the profession as a whole.

By identifying the primary orientation of an individual, organization, or culture toward a core concept such as human being or health, nursing students and practicing nurses can learn to justify and document their caring actions and intentions in a manner that will be understood by their colleagues in other disciplines and reimbursed by insurance or health financing systems.A metaparadigm is a set of theories or ideas that provide structure for how a discipline should function.

For a nursing discipline, these theories consist of four basic concepts that address the patient as a whole, the patient’s health and well-being, the patient’s environment and the nursing responsibilities. The nursing metaparadigm is a conceptual framework that demonstrates the interconnected nature of nursing, person (patient), environment and health.

Examination of the impact of technology on the practice of nursing is well served by use of this framework, which has been nursing’s foundation from Florence Nightingale forward. According to the School of Nursing at The College of New Jersey, the four metaparadigm concepts are humans, environment, health and nursing practice.

The concept of humans as patients is critical to nursing as the entire practice revolves around caring for people. Nursing must take into account the. Phenomenon of Nursing: this nursing metaparadigm concept is related to the art and science of nursing; it consists of nursing actions or nursing interventions.

Think of this concept as what nurses DO. - Nursing Philosophy and Nursing Theory: A Comparison of the Metaparadigm Concepts of Nursing of Nursing with Personal Philosophy and the Theory of Madeleine M. Leininger Developing a personal philosophy of nursing and patient care is essential to the development of every nurse.

A metaparadigm is commonly described as a set of concepts and propositions that set forth a general statement of a discipline. The central focus of the profession of nursing is developed around the idea of providing different dimensions of care to individuals in need by .