Introduction
Nursing is an essential component of the healthcare system that is concerned with ensuring patients receive optimum care, promoting health, and preventing the advancement of diseases. Nursing is not solely crucial for the treatment of diseases and sick patients (Frisch & Rabinowitsch, 2019). Their increased stay with patients within hospital corridors and wards make their contribution indispensable. They are required to monitor patient welfare to ensure that their conditions do not take dangerous turns, jeopardizing the health of patients. Nurses are vital for ensuring that the patient’s stay at the hospital is productive in ensuring health is restored. Nursing entails ensuring that health is attained in its holistic form as envisioned by the World Health Organization of health. Nurses address physical ailments and consider the mental and social well-being of patients by engaging their families.
Nursing is also involved in the prevention of diseases among the general public and patients. Nurses prevent the occurrence of hospital-acquired infections through their contribution to the various procedures performed by making sure the environment and various appliances are antiseptic (Fukada, 2018). Nursing also ensures that members of the general public are sensitized to the various changes in the healthcare sphere. This sensitization involves the administration of vaccines and the prescription of guidelines such as hygiene which prevent the occurrence of diseases within the community. Nursing also involves assisting other health professionals, such as doctors in performing their functions, still geared toward the recovery of health.
Assumptions of Underlying Beliefs
One of the most crucial underlying beliefs of nursing is the privacy of the patient. This involves ensuring that the welfare of the patient is not informed to uninformed parties. Privacy entails having trustworthiness for people to honestly present their health deficiencies to them. In this regard, nurses are required to practice a high level of secrecy with the information they acquire in their work (Reichlin et al., 2019). The information acquired about patients can only be released to parties such as the government, which is legally obliged to care for its citizens. Social justice is an essential underpinning of the nursing profession, and nurses are required to ensure that all people are well cared for. Social justice also implies the practice of nursing, which is devoid of favoritism and based on equality. Nurses are bound by the oaths they take at the start of their practice to be defendants of social justice concerning healthcare.
Commitment to service and its function is an underlying belief of nursing that makes the profession immensely noble. Nurses are required to carry out their functions in the service of the population of people dependent on them. Commitment implies arriving at their working station within the stipulated time and making sacrifices whenever emergencies occur. Nurses are required to commit to the well-being of their patients, hence cannot harbor malice regardless of the personal relationship that may inform otherwise. Autonomy in decision-making and responsibility for the actions taken is another professional tent that underpins the nursing practice (Roshanzadeh et al., 2018). Nurses are required to ensure that they make the best decision regarding the care of their patients in a manner that ensures they can explain their rationale if required to do so. Personal responsibility is the hallmark of the nursing practice as the years of training and experience in the field inform a better understanding of potation needs.
Definitions and Major Domains of Nursing
The primary domains of the nursing practice are patient, environment, health, and nursing. The patient refers to the person in need of healthcare and identifies them as an individual with unique characteristics. A patient is an individual and must be separated from their condition during their definition. A patient generally has better parameters that can define them, with these parameters including religious beliefs. These beliefs must be considered as they constitute the person. The patient also has a unique culture, and their medical condition varies from that of any other patient within a healthcare center (Fagerström, 2021). The environment refers to all the conditions, circumstances, and influences which affect an individual. The environment has a bearing on the well-being of a patient and cannot be ignored in the general assessment of their welfare. The environment includes the background, hospital settings, and social position. The environment can be divided into social, chemical, and physical factors which affect a patient and their health.
Health is characterized by the description of the physical and mental faculties of the human body. Health is defined by the WHO in the three parameters of physical, social, and mental well-being, and not merely the absence of illness. Health can be described based on the discrepancies witnessed within the human body, including anatomical and pathological variations. Nursing is the final domain and involves the practice in general, with its professionals being referred to as nurses. These are crucial members of the healthcare workforce who perform essential life-saving duties within hospital settings (Fagerström, 2021). In the practice of nursing, nurses must maintain humanity and engage their patients as people with needs. This involves guaranteeing the humanity of patients in contrast to treating them like faulty machines in need of repair. Nursing involves making conversations with patients to understand their needs and to reassure them about their conditions. The practice of nursing requires the inclusion of patient needs in interventions proposed, guaranteeing that such practices are in tandem with the beliefs of patients.
Conclusion
The nurse is the practitioner tasked with the duty of restoring the well-being of a patient. A patient is an identifiable person capable of making decisions and whose unique orientations must be considered in the practice of nursing. The environment is responsible for the development of disease and is essential in the recovery of patients. Nursing in the future is likely to embrace the developing technology and make some processes automatic. This will prevent flaws in processes informed by forgetfulness or blatant disregard of the protocol. Nursing in the future will continue to grow, with responsibilities for nurses being expanded to include more aspects of care, given the proximity of nurses to patients.
Some of the challenges likely to be faced in the practice of nursing include the increasing disease conditions. Some of these conditions include cancer, which is difficult to treat. The prevalence of these conditions continues to increase, and the burden of disease is also becoming unbearable for the patients and their families. My goals for professional development include higher education to ensure that I am better qualified to meet the welfare of my patients. Joining an institution of higher learning will enable increased education alongside the attendance of various nursing functions such as conferences to remain abreast with developments.
References
Fagerström, L. M. (2021). A Caring Advanced Practice Nursing Model: Theoretical Perspectives And Competency Domains. Springer Nature.
Frisch, N. C., & Rabinowitsch, D. (2019). What’s in a Definition? Holistic Nursing, Integrative Health Care, and Integrative Nursing: Report of an Integrated Literature Review. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 37(3), 089801011986068.
Fukada, M. (2018). Nursing Competency: Definition, Structure and Development. Yonago Acta Medica, 61(1), 001–007.
Reichlin, R., Peltier, M., Raether, E., & Polonsky, S. (2019). Nursing curriculum through a social justice lens: An upstream approach. Public Health Nursing, 36(3), 422–428. h
Roshanzadeh, M., Aghaei, M., Kashani, E., Pasaeimehr, Z., & Tajabadi, A. (2018). Strategies of Professional Nursing Autonomy. Scientific Journal of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedical Faculty, 4(1), 1–5. Web.