Question

Reflect on the definition of the four concepts of the nursing meta-paradigm. Write your own definition for each concept of the meta-paradigm of nursing. Which concept would you add to the meta-paradigm of nursing and why? Which concept would you eliminate and why?

Answer 1

Introduction:- There are four basic concepts in nursing which called metaparadigms.This is a conceptual framework of nursing which consist of four parts that is ,clients,environment,health and nursing.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.

Definition:-

Client:-Humans are viewed as valued persons, to be respected, nurtured and understood with the right to make informed choices regarding their health.For the purpose of study in nursing, biological, psychological, spiritual, intellectual and sociocultural dimensions of human beings and stages of human development are delineated as they affect behavior and health. These dimensions operate within and upon the human being in an open, interrelated, interdependent, and interactive way. The nursing client is an open system, continually changing in mutual process with the changing environment. Recipients of nursing actions may be well or ill and include individuals, families and communities.

Environment:-Environment is the landscape and geography of human social experience, the setting or context of experience as everyday life and includes variations in space, time and quality. This geography includes personal, social, national, global, and beyond. Environment also includes societal beliefs, values, mores, customs, and expectations. The environment is an energy field in mutual process with the human energy field and is conceptualized as the arena in which the nursing client encounters aesthetic beauty, caring relationships, threats to wellness and the lived experiences of health. Dimensions that may affect health include physical, psychosocial, cultural, historical and developmental processes, as well as the political and economic aspects of the social world.

Health:-Health, a dynamic process, is the synthesis of wellness and illness and is defined by the perception of the client across the life span. This view focuses on the entire nature of the client in physical, social, aesthetic, and moral realms. Health is contextual and relational. Wellness, in this view, is the lived experience of congruence between one’s possibilities and one’s realities and is based on caring and feeling cared for. Illness is defined as the lived experience of loss or dysfunction that can be mediated by caring relationships. Inherent in this conceptualization is each client’s approach to stress and coping. The degree or level of health is an expression of the mutual interactive process between human beings and their environment.

Nursing:-Nursing is an academic discipline and a practice profession. It is the art and science of holistic health care guided by the values of human freedom, choice, and responsibility. Nursing science is a body of knowledge arrived at through theory development, research, and logical analysis. Nursing and other supporting theories are essential to guide and advance nursing practice. The art of nursing practice, actualized through therapeutic nursing interventions, is the creative use of this knowledge in human care. Nurses use critical thinking and clinical judgment to provide evidence-based care to individuals, families, aggregates, and communities to achieve an optimal level of client wellness in diverse nursing settings/contexts. Clinical judgment skills are therefore essential for professional nursing practice.

Nurses function autonomously and use power to shape the profession and empower clients through caring partnerships and other transactions. Within this framework, power is defined as the capacity to participate knowingly in the nature of change and is characterized by awareness, advocacy, choice, freedom to act intentionally, healing and involvement in creating changes.

The goal of nursing is humanistic enhancement of health potential in human beings as well as caring for the well, ill and the dying. Excellence in nursing requires commitment, caring and critical thinking in terms of mastery, status and control over practice.

I would like to add 'learning' in metapadigm of nursing theory series because,

Learning is a dynamic, self-initiated, life long process, that when successful manifests in the ability to change in thinking, valuing and behaving. Learning is facilitated through systematic inquiry, expert role modeling, mutual respect and dynamic transactions among faculty, students, nurses, clients and others. Ultimately, learning is the application of information into the lived experience, translating cognitive acquisition to praxis, with the goal of benefiting the larger society.

The baccalaureate graduate practices at the advanced beginner level, (Benner, 1984) and operates on abstract principles, formal models and theories to function safely in a clinical situation. With this knowledge base and through experience, the new graduate can develop context-dependent judgment and skill that can be acquired only in real situations. Building on advanced beginner skills and knowledge the master’s graduate moves toward the expert level of practice.