Nursing Is A Caring Profession 1
Nursing Is A Caring Profession 1
Nursing Is A Caring Profession 1
ESSAY
Nursing is a caring profession. It is also a profession that is more and more evidenced based in practice. In as much as the scientific aspects of nursing is increasing due to the complex technological advancement of medicine and the machinery that is used at the patients bedside, the fact remains that the nurse is the first person that the client usually comes in contact with in any emergency or hospital setting. Having said this, the term, "caring" is an essential emotion that all nurses, for that matter, all individuals in the health profession must possess. With caring comes the trained ability of the nurse to facilitate therapeutic communication. One might ask, what is therapeutic communication? To better answer this question, the term communication should first be defined. Communication can be defined as "The Process of transmitting messages and interpreting meaning." (Wilson and others, 1995) With therapeutic communication, the sender, or nurse seeks to illicit a response from the receiver, the patient that is beneficial to the patients mental and physical health. Just as stress has been proven to adversely affect the health of individuals, the therapeutic approach to communication can actually help. In any given situation everyone uses communication. Everyone has seen the individual that looks like they are either angry, stressed, feeling ill or maybe sad. These emotions are communicated to others not always by words, but by gestures and facial expressions. A nurse must always be aware of these expressions in clients, for these expressions may be the only way that the nurse can tell if there is something else going on that needs their attention. The term given to this type of non-verbal communication is called, meta-communication. In meta-communication, the client may look at their amputated stump and say that it doesn't really look that bad, while at the same time tears are rolling down from their eyes.
2. Body Nursing is a noble profession and nurses have contributed their commitment and dedication to their patients, giving comfort, support and love. Why is caring unique when given by the nurse versus given by just anyone? Often times, we hear the common expression; I care about you, or I will help you overcome this. The nurses job of caring for patients is a physical manifestation of a caring attitude and calling. What then is it in the care given by a nurse that is so powerful that it can actually lead to the process of healing? Dr. Jean Watson is famous for her philosophy and science of caring and in her book published in 2005 called Caring Science as Sacred Science, she discusses the concept of caring and healing for health professionals based on moral, philosophical, and scientific framework. According to Dr. Watson, a harmony between science and the humanities acknowledges a deeper value of quality of living and dying that involves ethical, physical, moral and psychological components. Dr. Watson identified ten carative factors as the core processes involved in the professional practice of caring. These core factors are: Faith and hope, Humanistic system of values, Sensitivity towards others, Trust, Expression of positivity and negativity, Problem solving, Promotion of learning relationships, Provision of support, i.e. spiritually, physically, emotionally, etc. Fulfillment of human needs, Promotion of transpersonal caring and love The caring energy is powerful that enhances healing with the core factors involved in the process. The basic idea is that all around us is made up of energy and everyone emits some energy. The nurse emits a much higher frequency of caring energy than the energy of a sick patient that converge into conscious healing process thus, tapping on the inner healing field of the patient. Once the inner healing field is touched, the healing process begins. As a professional nurse, one is equipped with nursing knowledge with the integration of the clinical carative factors, critical thinking skills, and the consciousness of caring that promotes the caring-healing relationships with the patient. This conscious caring attitude and skill is enhanced through practice over time. The caring energy that resonates from the nurse to patient restoring ones normal health is incomprehensible. Showing how one appreciate and value the contributions of nurses to the caring nursing profession will surely provide encouragement to keep the caring energy flowing! In a case such as this the nurse should stay and further explore how the person actually feels. There are many factors associated with the healing and comforting aspects of therapeutic communication. Circumstances, surroundings, and timing all play a role in the effect of therapeutic communication. If a client is being rushed down for an
emergency surgery there might not be time for a bedside conversation, but the holding of a hand could convey much more than words to the client at such a moment. Ideally, for therapeutic communication to be effective the nurse must be aware of how they appear to the client. If a nurse appears rushed, for example, they are speaking quickly, their countenance looks harried, and they are breathing heavily, their eyes not on the client but perhaps on an intravenous bag on the client in the next bed. In a case like this, there is nothing that this nurse could say to the client in a therapeutic manner that the client would believe. The helping relationship has not been established and therefore therapeutic communication cannot be facilitated. Some of the emotions associated with therapeutic communication include but are not limited to the following: Professionalism, Confidentiality, Courtesy, Trust, Availability, Empathy, and Sympathy. (Potter, Patricia A., Perry, Anne G., Co. 2003, Basic Nursing Essentials for Practice, pg. 123, Mosby) All of these emotions go into the client nurse relationship, which must be established by the nurse as soon as possible upon first meeting the client. To begin to establish this nurse client relationship, the nurse must assess the overall message that the client is communicating to the nurse, such as fear, pain, sadness, anxiety or apathy. The nurse should be trained in keying into the message that the client is sending. Only then can the nurse determine the best therapeutic approach. Anyone that has to be thrust in to a hospital or emergency room environment has level of anxiety. If caring is to be retained as the "essence" of nursing, and if research in this area is to advance, then the various perspectives of caring must be clarified, the strengths and the limitations of these conceptualizations examined, and the applicability of caring as a concept and theory to the practice of nursing identified. Examination of the concept of caring resulted in the identification of five epistemological perspectives: caring as a human state, caring as a moral imperative or ideal, caring as an affect, caring as an interpersonal relationship, and caring as a nursing intervention. Two outcomes of caring were identified: caring as the subjective experience and as the physiologic responses in patients. The authors concluded that knowledge development related to caring in nursing is limited by the lack of refinement of caring theory, the lack of definitions of caring attributes, the neglect to examine caring from the dialectic perspective, and the focus of theorists and researchers on the nurse to the This level can go up considerably when the client feels that they have been abandoned or that there is no one there that really cares about how they feel. When a client is the recipient of therapeutic communication from a caring individual, a level of trust is achieved and more than, that the clients entire countenance can change for the better. Their blood pressure, respirations and levels of stress can simultaneously decrease. When this takes place, the management of pain, if any is involved, can be resolved more quickly. The goal for a nurse is to become proficient in the medical.